UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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FRENCH  TRAITS 


1589 


FRENCH  TRAITS 


AN  ESSAY  IN  COMPARATIVE  CRITICISM 


BY 

W.  C.  BROWNELL 


NEW  YOEK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1919 


3U8(i: 


o 


CoPTBiOHT,  1888,  1889,  bt 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


CoPTBIOHT,   1917,  BT 

W.  C.  BROWNELL 


1097 


TO  mCHABD  WHiTJUlNG 


r 


COiNTENTS 


PAQE 


rr)  I.  The  Social  Instinct,        .       .       .  .1 

•Vj'  -  11.    MOUALITY,     ........      41 

III.  Intelligence, 83 

j  IV.  Sense  and  Sentiment, 125 

"      v.  Manners, 163 

VI.  Women, .201 

VII.  The  Art  Instinct, 243 

VIII.  The  Provincial  Spuiit, 279 


J        -,»^    IX.  Democracy,         .        .        .        .       ■         .        .  313 
X.  New  York  after  Paris,  .       .  ,        .  375 


I 

THE  SOCIAL  INSTINCT 


THE  SOCIAL  INSTINCT 


The  apparent  contrast  between  modem  French- 
men and  the  crusaders,  between  the  "  cafe-haunt- 
ers "  and  the  cathedral-builders,  stimulates  specula- 
tion as  to  whether  the  present  interest  of  France  is 
commensurate  with  her  historic  importance.  The 
noblest  monuments  in  the  world  attest  the  part  she 
once  played  in  the  drama  of  civilization.  Were 
Rheims  and  Amiens,  Bourges  and  Beauvais,  the  em- 
bodied aspiration  of  the  race  whose  activities  one 
observes  along  the  Paris  boulevards  to-day  ?  Are 
there  any  signs  in  the  actual  Normandy  of  the  spirit 
which  dotted  the  North  coast  with  the  stone  temples 
beside  which  their  differentiation  across  the  Channel 
seems  often  jflimsy  and  superficial  ?  Or,  at  the  other 
end  of  France,  as  one  descends  the  magnificent 
thoroughfare  which  consoles  the  Marseillais  for  the 
greater  general  splendor  of  Paris,  does  any  linger- 
ing reminiscence  reach  one  of  the  instinct  which 
covered  the  IMidi  with  the  massive  monuments  of 
Proven  yal  Romanesque  ?  As  one  observes  the  audi- 
ence which  listens  to  Guignol,  it  seems  fabulous 
that  the  Frank  ever  ci'ossed  the  Rhine.  As  one 
notes  the  gayety,  the  bonhomie,  the  bright  gracious-< 


4  FRENCH  TRAITS 

ness  of  a  Parisian  or  provincial  crowd,  the  Merovin- 
gian epoch  seems  a  myth.  Is  there  any  traceable 
relationship  between  St.  Remy  at  Rheims  and  St. 
Augustin  at  Paris,  between  St.  Jean  at  Lyons  and 
the  Nouvel  Opera,  between  the  Sainte  Chapelle  and 
the  Pantheon?  The  difiference  is  as  vast  as  that 
between  gloom  and  gayety,  between  the  grandiose 
and  the  familiar,  the  mystic  and  the  rational  From 
the  Palace  of  the  Popes  at  Avignon  to  the  Marseilles 
Cannebi^re,  from  the  Chartres  sculpture  to  M  Fal- 
gui^re,  from  Plessis-les-Tours  to  the  Tuileries,  is  a 
long  way.  The  contrast  seems  not  in  epoch,  but  in 
character.  In  no  other  country  is  it  marked  in  any- 
thing like  the  same  degree.  In  England  the  same 
character  is  traceable  in  the  London  Law  Courts 
and  the  ruins  of  Kenilworth  ;  Orford  Street  and 
Piccadilly  but  deepen  the  impression  of  Chester  and 
Warwick ;  there  is  a  subtle  sympathy  between  West- 
minster and  St  Paul's.  One  is  sure  that  the  ances- 
tors of  the  shopmen  in  the  Burlington  Arcade  and 
of  the  owners  of  the  West  End  palaces  fought  side 
by  side  at  Crecy  and  Poictiers,  where  they  occupied 
pretty  much  the  same  reciprocal  relations  and  en- 
tertained, mutatis  mutandis,  pretty  much  the  same 
notions  of  hfe,  art,  and  foreignera  In  Germany  it 
is  not  very  different.  The  cavalrymen  of  1870-71, 
who  sabred  the  damask  and  stole  the  clocks  of  the 
French  chateaux,  were  Hneal  descendants  of  the 
lanzknechts  of  the  Rhine.  Just  as,  no  doubt,  Ger- 
man "probity,"  directness,  and   simpUcity  remain 


THE  SOCIAL   INSTINCT  6 

what  they  were  in  the  time  of  Luther — not  to  men- 
tion that  of  Arminius,  whom  even  at  this  distance 
of  time  Professor  Mommsen  finds  it  difficult  to 
refer  to  without  emotion.  Cologne  Cathedral  was 
finished  within  the  decade,  after  the  original  designs. 
Bavaria  goes  wild  to-day  over  the  stories  of  the  mcis- 
ter-singers.  Even  Dresden  figurines  and  Saxon  ba- 
roque in  general  are  gothic  in  the  last  analysis — 
quite  without  the  grace  born  of  the  Renaissance  pas- 
sion for  the  beautiful,  and  still  as  clumsy  as  per- 
fected knowledge  will  permit.  The  succession  to 
Winckelmann  is  certainly  as  little  frivolous  as  Burgk- 
mair  and  Schongauer,  and  German  criticism  is  still 
metaphysical  and  scholastic.  Italy,  from  the  time 
of  the  Pisans  down  to  the  decline  of  the  high  Renais- 
sance, and  from  the  return  of  the  popes  to  the  French 
Revolution,  visibly  illustrates  a  natural  evolution. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  Spain.  And  since  the 
Revolution,  whatever  is  distinctly  modern  in  Italian 
or  Spanish  character  and  culture,  any  note  of  dis- 
cordant modification,  is  to  be  attributed  in  no  small 
degree  to  the  French  occupation.  Only  in  France 
does  there  seem  to  be  a  break. 

The  times  change,  and  the  most  acutely  alive 
change  most  in  them.  Since  the  days  of  Louis  le 
Gros,  when  the  national  unity  began,  France  has 
most  conspicuously  of  all  nations  changed  with  the 
epoch  ;  in  those  successive  readjustments  which  we 
call  progress  she  has  almost  invariably  been  in  the 
lead.     She  was  the  star  of  the  ages  of  faith  as  she 


6  FRENCH  TRAITS 

is  the  light  of  the  age  of  fellowship.  The  contrast 
between  her  actual  self  and  her  monuments  is, 
therefore,  most  striking  ;  but  at  the  same  time  it  is 
superficial  only  and  perfectly  explicable.  And  its 
explanation  gives  the  key  to  French  character  ;  for 
there  is  one  instinct  of  human  nature,  one  aspira^ 
tion  of  the  mind,  which  France  has  incarnated  with 
unbroken  continuity  from  the  first — since  there 
was  a  France  at  all  France  has  embodied  the  social 
instinct.  It  was  this  instinct  which  finally  triumphed 
over  the  barbaric  Frankish  personality  ;  which  dur- 
ing the  panic  and  individualism  of  the  Middle  Ages 
took  refuge  in  the  only  haven  sympathetically  dis- 
posed to  harbor  it  and  produced  the  finest  monu- 
ments of  Europe  by  the  force  of  spiritual  solidarity  ; 
which,  so  soon  as  the  time  was  ripe,  extended  itself 
temporally  and  created  a  civil  organism  that  rescued 
the  human  spirit  from  servitude,  and  which,  fin- 
ally, in  the  great  transformation  of  the  Revolution, 
obtained  the  noblest  victory  over  the  forces  of  an- 
archy and  unreason  that  history  records.  Thus  in 
the  days  when  the  mediaeval  spirit  of  authority,  of 
concentration,  of  asceticism,  of  individualism  was 
almost  all-powerful  in  Europe,  the  French  social 
instinct  triumphed  in  the  only  sphere  in  which 
exalted  effort  was  productive  ;  and  now  that  this 
instinct  has  been  brought  into  harmony  with  the 
Time-Spirit,  now  that  solidarity  is  not  only  secular- 
ized but  popularized,  France  illustrates  its  new 
phases  as  perfectly  as  she  did  the  old.     There  has 


THE   SOCIAL  INSTINCT  7 

really  been  no  break  in  her  historic  continuity.  The 
cathedrals  are  not  feudal.  They  were  the  product 
of  a  spirit  partly  ecclesiastical,  partly  secular,  but 
always  social — the  true  Gallo-Roman  spirit  which, 
great  as  was  the  perfection  attained  by  German 
feudalism  in  France,  constantly  struggled  against 
and  finally  conquered  its  foreign  Frankish  foe.  The 
cathedrals,  in  a  word,  are  merely  the  bridge  by 
which  France  clears  the  IVIiddle  Age.  They  are  gran- 
diose links  in  the  chain  which  unites  the  Revolu- 
tion to  the  twelfth  century  communal  movement  for 
equality.  They  mark  a  phase  of  the  long  struggle 
of  solidarity  with  anarchic  forces,  as  do  the  anti- 
ecclesiastical  movement  of  Philippe-le-Bel,  the  na- 
tional condensation  of  Louis  XI.,  the  Renaissance 
reversion  to  classic  social  as  well  as  artistic  ideals, 
and  finally  the  burial  at  the  Revolution  of  moral 
and  material  Byzantinism. 

There  is  accordingly  even  a  closer  spiritual  iden- 
tity between  the  Nouvel  Opera  and  Notre  Dame  de 
Paris  than  there  is,  for  example,  between  the  Eng- 
lish Cathedral  and  its  perfunctory  reproduction  in 
the  British  Houses  of  Parliament — the  identity  of 
instinct  diffeiing  only  in  phase.  And  this  instinct 
is,  as  I  said,  the  key  to  French  character  and  the 
most  conspicuous  trait  whereby  French  character 
differs  from  our  own.  French  history  is  the  history 
of  this  instinct.  The  fusion  of  Gallic  characteris- 
tics with  Roman  institutions  apparently  developed 
a  disposition  of  Athenian  interdependence  and  soli- 


8  FRENCH   TRAITS  ,' 

darity,  all  of  whose  accomplishments  were  to  be 
organically  wi-ought,  and  whose  failures  were  to 
come  from  the  subordination  of  the  individual  mem- 
ber involved  in  the  supremacy  of  the  general  struct- 
ure. The  Catholic  Church  came  next  and  contrib- 
uted an  influence  to  the  moulding  of  modern  France 
which  it  is  impossible  not  to  recognize  on  every  hand. 
No  one  can  pass  from  a  Protestant  to  a  Catholic 
country  without  being  struck  by  the  numerous 
characteristic  differences  which  force  themselves 
upon  the  sense  and  the  mind.  The  two  shores  of 
the  English  Channel,  of  Lake  Geneva,  of  the  Hol- 
landsch  Diep,  the  two  sides  of  the  Vosges — wher- 
ever the  two  systems  come  into  contact  the  contrast 
is  marked.  To  a  Protestant  entering  France  the 
influence  of  Catholicism  is  especially  striking,  be- 
cause in  France,  owing  to  French  clearness  and 
method,  what  elsewhere  are  only  Latin  tendencies 
become  perfectly  developed  traits.  It  is  indefinite 
at  first,  but  very  sensible  nevertheless.  Long  fam- 
iUarity  deepens  the  impression.  The  absence  of  the 
individual  spirit,  the  absence  of  the  sense  of  per- 
sonal responsibiUty,  the  social  interdependence  of 
people,  the  respect  for  public  opinion,  the  conse- 
quent consideration  for  others,  the  free  play  of  mind 
compatible  only  with  a  certain  carelessness  as  to 
deductions,  and  a  confidence  that  society  in  general 
will  see  to  it  that  the  world  roll  on  even  if  one's  own 
logic  be  imperfect — a  dozen  traits  characteristic  and 
cardinal  one  associates  at  once  with  the  influence  of 


THE  SOCIAL  INSTINCT  9 

the  Catholic  Church.  The  great  work  of  the  Refor- 
mation was  to  quicken  the  sense  of  personal  respon- 
sibility by  awakening  the  conscience.  The  predom- 
inant influence  of  the  Catholic  Church  has  been  to 
enforce  the  sense  of  social  interdependence  among 
men,  to  destroy  individualism  by  organizing  and 
systematizing,  and  then  itself  assuming  entire  charge 
of  the  domain  of  the  conscience.  The  conscience  is, 
of  course,  the  most  important  of  the  springs  of  hu- 
man action.  In  proportion  as  the  individual  charges 
himself  with  soliciting  and  following  its  oracles  his 
character  is  fortified  and  concentrated,  his  individ- 
uality intensified.  In  proportion  as  he  resigns  this 
charge  into  other  hands,  he  places  the  true  centre  of 
his  moral  nature  outside  himself,  his  individuality  be- 
comes less  marked,  and  his  relations  to  others  more 
sensible,  more  important.  Is  he  not,  indeed,  vitally 
connected  with  something  external  which  charges  it- 
self with  the  direction  of  the  most  powerful  moral 
agent  of  his  nature,  and  are  not  all  his  fellows  thus 
connected  also  ?  The  bond  of  union  between  men  is 
thus  infinitely  stronger  in  Catholic  communities  than 
in  Protestant,  and  in  this  way  directly  comes  about, 
by  gentle  gradations  of  logical  consistency,  that  con- 
siderateness,  that  deference,  that  sense  of  dependence 
upon  others,  that  feeling  that  one's  true  centre  is 
outside  of  one  and  in  a  safer  place,  so  to  speak,  the 
respect  for  public  opinion,  the  harmony  with  one's 
time  and  environment — all  the  fruits  in  fine  of  the 
social  instinct  re-enforced  by  religious  system. 


10  FRENCH  TRAITS 

This  is  the  direct,  sensible  influence  of  Catholicism, 
as  on  the  other  hand  the  direct,  sensible  influence  of 
Protestantism  has  been  to  isolate  and  to  individual- 
ize. But  the  indirect  influence  of  each  system  for 
being  less  sensible  is  not  the  less  real  or  important, 
and  the  indirect  influence  of  Catholicism  has  tended 
to  social  expansion  as  potently  as  its  direct  influence 
to  social  concert  Renunciation  and  asceticism,  ec- 
stacy  and  elevation,  the  mediaeval  virtues,  in  fact,  are 
often  called  especially  Catholic  virtues.  They  are, 
indeed,  eminently  virtues  of  the  Catholic  Church,  but 
they  have  never  been  virtues  of  a  Catholic  society. 
Renunciation  shines  out  beautifully  and  bountifully 
from  the  pages  of  the  Legends  of  the  Saints.  His- 
tory is  full  of  instances  of  the  divine  self-forgetting 
of  monks  and  nuns.  Even  Catholic  fanaticism  has 
always  been  marked  by  it.  Ignafihs  had  as  much  of  it 
in  his  way  as  St.  Theresa.  But  in  Cathohc  societies 
themselves,  the  Catholic  Church  in  this  regard  has 
always  strictly  separated  itself  from  the  world.  It 
has  been  in  them,  but  not  of  them.  It  has,  so  to 
speak,  organized  its  renunciation,  and  its  organized 
renunciation  has  sold  indulgences  to  society  in  gen- 
eral. The  result  has  been,  of  course,  that  society 
in  general — that  is  to  say,  everyone  with  no  clear 
vocation  for  thorough-going  renunciation — improves 
its  opportunity  and  uses  its  indulgences  freely. 
That  in  France  it  never  did,  and  certainly  does  not 
now,  use  these  to  their  utmost  limit  is  due  to  the 
native  French  talent  for  sobriety,  but  it  is  evident 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  11 

that  the  instinct  for  social  expansion  has  been  forti- 
fied by  Catholicism,  as  it  has  been  repressed  by 
Protestantism,  in  the  same  way  that  one  system  has 
quickened  and  the  other  lessened  the  sense  of  mu- 
tual interdependence  among  men.  Just  as,  in  con- 
trast to  the  separatism  of  Protestantism,  Catholicism 
has  tended  to  unify  and  nationalize,  to  render  organic 
the  structure  of  society,  so  it  has  tended  to  develop 
all  those  sides  of  man's  nature  which  relate  him  to 
the  external  world,  and  we  have  in  France,  as  a  re- 
sult in  great  part  of  Catholic  influences,  not  only  a 
people  intensely  organic  and  solidaire,  but  a  people 
possessed  of  the  epicurean  rather  than  the  ascetic 
ideal  in  morals,  its  unmoral  nature  harmoniously 
evolved  without  restraint  from  a  higher  spiritual 
law,  its  intelligence  so  highly  cultivated  as  some- 
times to  supplant  the  soul  in  the  sphere  of  senti- 
ment, and  its  social  and  mutual  activities  carried  to 
an  extent  and  refined  in  a  degree  of  which  we  have 
ordinarily  a  very  inadequate  idea. 

The  preponderance  thus  of  unifying  over  contro- 
versial and  separatist  forces  has  rendered  it  the 
most  homogeneous  in  the  world,  and,  accordingly, 
if  it  be  ever  excusable  to  speak  of  a  people  in  the 
mass,  it  is  excusable  in  the  case  of  the  French. 
What  one  notes  in  the  individual  is  more  than  any- 
where else  apt  to  be  a  national  trait.  There  is,  of 
course,'  differentiation  enough,  but  it  begins  further 
along'  than  with  us,  and  is  structural  rather  than 
fortuitous.     They   vary   by  types   rather   than   by 


12  FRENCH   TRAITS 

units.  The  class  only  is  specialized.  Their  homcx 
geneousness  is  not  uniformity,  but  it  is  divided 
rather  in  the  details  than  in  the  grand  construction. 
The  Parisians  so  bore  each  other  often  by  force  of 
mutual  sympathies  and  identical  ideas,  that  en7iui 
itself  has  probably  had  a  large  share  in  the  variety 
of  their  political  experimentation  and  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  their  elaborate  epicureanism.  They  are 
infinitely  civilized.  Individuals  are  of  less  import 
than  the  relations  between  them  ;  hence  manners 
and  art  Character  counts  less  than  capacity ;  hence 
the  worship  of  the  intelligence.  They  have  little  or 
none  of  our  introspectiveuess.  They  understand 
themselves  thoroughly,  but  by  instinct,  and  not  as 
the  result  of  examination.  They  are  far  more  inter- 
ested in  you  than  in  themselves,  and  contemplate 
you  much  more  closely.  This  indeed  they  do  very 
narrowly,  and  an  American  who  is  himself  enough 
addicted  to  "  taking  notes  "  to  remark  the  practice 
under  its  skilful  veil  of  interest  and  civiUty  is  apt  to 
find  it  irksome.  Bat  even  in  your  personality  their 
interest  is  never  pushed  to  the  extent  of  consider- 
ing such  of  its  complexities  as  arise  from  counter- 
currents  of  mind  and  feeling  and  will — such  as  a 
writer  Uke  George  Eliot,  for  instance,  or  Hawthorne, 
or  Thomas  Hardy,  is  so  greatly  attracted  by.  They 
seem  always  to  fancy  you  a  "  plain  case,"  and  only 
solicitous  to  learn  what  label  to  take  from  their 
assortment  (an  assortment,  by  the  way,  far  more 
comprehensive  than  any  otlier  people's)  with  which 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  13 

to  ticket  you.  If  your  complexity  is  the  chief  thing 
about  you,  they  ticket  you  "fin"  (for  which  our 
word  is  "subtle"),  and  so  pigeon-hole  you  without 
further  examination.  It  is  humiliating  to  the  Am- 
erican sense  to  note  how  often  this  is  really  all  that 
the  case  calls  for ;  the  suggestion  is  irresistible 
that  much  of  our  personal  "  hair-splitting "  is  as 
nebulously  unprofitable  as  the  refinements  of  Teu- 
tonic metaphysics.  With  the  French,  at  all  events, 
the  process  of  working  out  any  social  equation  is 
always  marked  by  the  use  of  the  personal  factor  as 
a  known  term.  "X"  is  never  you,  but  your  capa- 
cities, your  manifestations,  what  you,  with  your 
Anglo-Saxon  self- concentration,  describe  as  your 
mere  "phenomena." 

Idiosyncrasy,  in  a  word,  has  little  interest  for 
them.  Until  it  has  been  embalmed  in  legend  it  is 
rather  resented  than  tolerated,  even  in  its  grandiose 
manifestations.  There  is  little  hero-worship  that  is 
either  blind  or  vague.  There  is  absolutely  no 
French  sympathy  with  the  notion  that  heroes  are 
made  of  essentially  different  stuff  from  the  rest  of 
mankind.  Great  men  are,  if  "nobler  brothers," 
most  of  all  "one  in  blood  ;"  and  it  is  by  sufferance 
only  that  they  are  permitted  to  "  lord  it  o'er  "  their 
fellows,  in  Sterling's  phrase,  by  either  "looks  of 
beauty"  or  "words  of  good."  There  is  the  Hugo, 
the  Millet,  as  there  was  the  Napoleonic  legende,  but 
their  inspiration  is  mainly  decorous  and  conformed 
to  the  prevalent  regard  for  the  fitness  of  things 


14  FRENCH  TRAITS 

rather  than  emotionally  sincere.  "  Cher  maitre  "  is 
a  title  borne  by  scorea  M.  Dumas  Jils  is  a  "  cher 
maitre."  And  the  popularity  of  this  attitude  is 
ascribable  to  the  vanity  which  seeks  association  or 
identification  with  celebrity,  not  at  all  to  the  Ger- 
manic quality  of  admiration.  Of  Goethe's  three 
kinds  of  reverence — for  what  ia  above  us,  for  our 
equals,  and  for  what  is  beneath  us — the  second 
only,  that  is  to  say  what  is  more  properly  called 
deference,  is  commonly  illustrated  by  Frenchmen- 
Such  a  book  as  Mr.  Peter  Bayne's  "  Lessons  from 
my  Masters  "  would  be  a  solecism  in  France.  The 
proceedings  of  the  Browning  Society  would  excite 
amazement  The  spirit  of  the  MoUeristes  and  that 
of  the  Goethe  adorers  are  in  complete  contrast.  The 
intense  emotion  which  led  one  of  Carlyle's  secre- 
taries pubUcly  to  express  a  sense  of  spiritual  indebt- 
edness to  him  next  after  his  "Lord  and  Saviour, 
Jesus  Christ,"  would  seem  whimsically  excessive.  No 
Frenchman  so  surrenders  himself  to  any  personal 
influence ;  awe  and  abjectness  are  equally  un- 
French.  The  anecdote  of  one  contemporary  Eng- 
lish poet  going,  footstool  in  hand,  to  sit  at  the  feet 
of  another,  indicates  rather  the  French  order  of 
hero-worship,  which  if  less  cockney  in  its  expression 
is  characterized  by  the  same  sense  of  the  impor- 
tance of  the  impersonal  function  discharged  in  com- 
mon by  the  hero  and  his  worshipper. 

Character,  being  thus  less  considered,  develops 
less  energy.     "  That  which  all  things  tend  to  educe 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  15 

— which  freedom,  cultivation,  intercourse,  revolu- 
tions go  to  form  and  deliver — is  character,"  says 
Emerson,  with  transcendental  confidence.  Yes .' 
but  not  character  as  we  understand  it,  not  indi- 
vidual character  independent  of  its  environment. 
Freedom  goes  to  form  and  dehver  that,  most  assur- 
edly, but  not  necessarily  intercourse,  cultivation, 
revolutions — of  which  the  French  have  had  far 
more  than  they  have  had  of  freedom.  "  Trust  thy- 
self ! — every  heart  vibrates  to  that  iron  string."  In 
France  every  heart  thus  vibrates  only  when  the  said 
string  sounds  a  harmonious  strain  in  concerted 
music.  "The  giants  must  live  apart.  The  kings 
can  have  no  company,"  says  Thackeray.  In  France 
the  giants  are  as  rare  as  the  pygmies.  The  social 
instinct  is  inimical  to  both.  The  great  Frenchmen, 
it  has  been  acidly  remarked,  are  apt  to  be  Italians, 
and  in  effect  the  way  in  which  individual  Italians 
and  the  entire  French  people  have  united,  at  vari- 
ous epochs  in  history,  in  the  accompHshment  of 
great  works  is  exceedingly  instructive  as  to  the 
tendencies  of  either  civihzation.  The  great  French- 
men are  generally  great  on  their  human  and  social 
sides,  by  distinction  rather  than  by  energy.  They 
are  never  monsters.  No  ascetics  are  numbered 
among  them.  Their  minds  are  lofty,  but  they  are 
not  self-gathered  in  them.  Even  the  French  heroes 
have  less  egoism  than  vanity  ;  it  is  Henry  IV.,  not 
Napoleon,  that  is  truly  nationah  And,  as  history 
reminds   us,   they  are   not   found  isolated   but  in 


16  FRENCH  TRAITS 

groups,  whose  members  are  mutually  dependent 
and  supporting.  But  for  this,  and  for  the  general 
elevation  of  the  subsidiary  groups  around  them,  tbo 
eminence  of  many  of  them  would  be  more  conspic- 
uous than  it  is  ;  many  merely  eminent  names  in 
French  history  would  shine  heroic  and  grandiose 
on  the  roll  of  almost  any  other  nation,  because  of 
this  difference  in  perspective.  But  the  great  ac- 
complishments of  France  have,  in  general,  been  the 
work  rather  of  the  nation  than  of  those  heroes  who 
"  look  at  the  stars  with  an  answering  ray."  "Wher- 
ever the  task  of  progress  has  demanded  intollectuid 
inspiration  or  moral  energy,  it  is  the  Spaniard,  the 
Italian,  the  Englishman  who  excels,  but  it  is  the 
French  people  entire.  The  individual  work  of  its 
exceptional  volcanic  spirits  like  Mirabeau,  like 
Danton,  is  apt  to  be  incomplete.  Solider  building 
is  done  by  the  nation  organized — despotically  un- 
der the  Corsican  Bonaparte,  autonomously  under 
the  Genoese  Gambetta.  The  Revolution,  the  con- 
quering of  Europe,  the  freeing  of  the  human  spirit, 
which  the  kings  of  the  Continent  and  the  aristoc- 
racy of  England  could  only  temporarily  rcimprison, 
in  1815,  at  Vienna,  were  Titanic  works  wrought  by 
the  social  instinct  of  the  most  completely  organic 
people  in  history. 

In  the  familiar  and  every-day,  as  well  as  in  the 
exceptional  and  heroic  work  of  life,  the  power  and 
importance  of  the  social  instinct  show  themselves 
in  France  in  a  way  of  which  we  have  no  experience. 


THE  SOCIAL   INSTINCT  17 

The  relations  between  individuals  being  exalted 
into  a  distinct  social  force,  apart  from  the  person- 
alities therewith  connected,  these  relations  are  regu- 
lated, utilized,  and  decorated  to  very  noteworthy 
ends.  They  are  used  with  us  mainly  for  business 
purposes  ;  it  is  chiefly,  perhaps,  the  commercial 
traveller  who  exploits  them.  The  rest  of  us  enjoy 
them  or  neglect  them  as  the  case  may  be,  but  take 
no  thought  to  organize  and  direct  them.  The  social 
instinct,  nevertheless,  being  native  to  man,  even  to 
man  in  our  environment  of  riotous  individualism,  it 
incurs  the  risk  of  becoming  depi-aved  if  it  be  not 
developed.  This,  indeed,  is  its  veiy  frequent  fate 
in  many  of  our  communities,  and  the  amount  of 
positive  debauchery  due  to  a  perversion  of  this  in- 
stinct, which  perversion  is  itself  due  to  neglect,  is 
very  suggestive.  And  positive  debauchery  aside, 
the  pathetic  failure  of  genial  but  weak  natures  that 
in  a  truly  social  milieu  would  certainly  have  suc- 
ceeded is  still  more  significant  because  it  is  still 
more  hopeless.  In  France  social  capacity  is  a  prin- 
cipal part  of  the  youth's  equipment  for  liis  journey 
through  life.  In  virtue  of  it  young  men  rise  in 
the  world,  obtain  "  protection,"  and  acquire  vantage 
ground.  With  us,  hitherto,  a  turn  for  what  is 
called  society  is  fully  as  likely  to  be  a  bar  as  an  aid 
to  a  young  man's  success,  being  accepted  often  as 
indicating  frivolity,  if  not  extravagance  and  dissipa- 
tion, and,  at  all  events,  hostile  to  the  industry  and 
severe  application  which  pass  for  credentials  of 
2 


18  FRENCH  TRAITS 

solidity.  Success  in  an  industrial  society  does  not 
depend  on  the  favor  of  women,  and  we  are  wont  a 
little  to  contemn  the  large  and  interesting  class  of 
petits  jeunes  gens  of  which  French  society  makes  so 
much.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  many  accentu- 
ated types  wholly  peculiar  to  ourselves  and  gener- 
ated by  the  struggle  of  the  ambitious  and  intensely 
concentrated  individual  with  an  amorphous  and  un- 
developed society  which  he  can  in  a  measure  mould 
as  well  as  figure  in,  provided  only  his  energy  be 
sufficient  to  the  task.  Never  was  there  such  a  field 
for  the  parvenu  as  that  we  furnish.  Never  was  the 
parvenu  so  really  estimable  and  distinguished  a 
person.  With  energy  and  persistence,  a  man  who 
only  yesterday  ate  with  his  knife  may  to  morrow 
lay  down  rules  of  etiquette,  a  beneficiary  dispense 
charity,  a  country  merchant  regulate  a  railway  sys- 
tem— merely  by  the  force  through  which  strenu- 
ous personahty  imposes  itself  on  a  society  whose 
solidarity  is  too  feeble  to  protect  it  against  assault 
from  without  and  treachery  from  within.  In  most 
instances,  indeed,  our  pretense  of  solidarity  is  pure 
snobbishness,  and  our  parvenus  really — as  was  said 
of  Napoleon — arrives. 

The  Frenchman's  instincts  and  impulses  receive, 
on  the  contrary,  a  social  rather  than  an  egoistic 
development.  His  position  in  the  world,  the  esteem 
of  his  neighbors,  everything,  in  fact,  except  looking 
for  the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  which  prevents 
him  from  being  of  all  men  most  miserable,  are  ob* 


THE  SOCIAL  INSTINCT  19 

tained  by  a  far  more  complex  exercise  of  talent  than 
that  ascetic  concentration  of  effort  known  among  us 
as  "looking  out  for  Number  One."  Look  out  for 
"Number  One,"  the  Frenchman  certainly  does  in  the 
most  unflinching  and  devoted  manner  ;  but  the  pro- 
cess is  with  him  adapted  to  gregarious  rather  than 
insulated  conditions.  He  easily  spares  more  time 
from  business  than  we  do  from  idling  to  expend  in 
the  expansiveness  necessary  for  elaborate  social 
development ;  furthermore,  social  conditions  with 
him  prevent  time  so  expended  from  being,  even  in 
an  indirect  sense,  wasted,  so  that  he  is  never  more 
profitably  occupied  than  when  he  is,  so  to  speak, 
least  concentrated.  He  conquers  in  love,  war, 
affairs,  and  society,  not  as  with  us,  with  the  Ger- 
manic peoples  generally,  in  virtue  of  strenuous 
personality,  but  through  many-sidedness,  appreci- 
ativeuess,  perception,  sympathy — in  a  word,  less  by 
energy  than  by  intelligence.  And  this  intelligence 
itself  is  socially  developed.  The  late  M.  Caro  said 
of  the  Abbe  Roux  that  his  genius,  "  formed  in  soli- 
tude, outside  of  all  intellectual  commerce,  of  all 
expansion,"  is  characterized  by  "an  inner  spring 
and  source  of  ideas  in  their  native  state,  charged 
with  jparasitical  elements  neither  purged  by  essay  nor 
filtered  by  discussion  ;  by  ignorance  which  aston- 
ishes in  connection  with  certain  points  of  view  truly 
striking ;  by  faults  of  taste  unavoidable  in  the  ab- 
sence of  all  exterior  control  and  points  of  compari- 
son ;  by  a  certain  awkwardness,  sometimes  a  singular 


20  FRENCH   TRAITS 

want  of  discernment,  and  hence  a  defect  of  propor- 
tion and  development  between  thoughts  really  new 
and  those  which  seem  so  only  to  the  eyes  of  the 
artist  who  beheves  himself  to  have  discovered  them." 
One  could  not  better  describe  the  traits  which,  in 
our  life,  as  well  as  in  our  literature,  our  individual- 
ism throws  into  sharp  relief  in  contrast  with  those 
of  the  French. 

In  his  "Pensees  d'un  Solitaire"  the  Abbe  Roux 
himself  observes  that  "men  of  talent,  so  long  as 
they  have  only  intuitive  experiences,  are  bound  to 
commit  folHes,"  and  the  universal  prevalence  of  this 
conviction  in  France  secures  great  openness  and 
spiritual  reciprocity.  There  are  no  people  whom  it 
is  "  difficult  to  know,"  who  are  very  "  reserved  "  in 
the  presence  of  strangers,  who  are  particularly  "ret- 
icent" about  their  own  affairs,  who  have  "secrets" 
and  resent  familiarity.  A  high  development  of  the 
social  instinct  makes  short  work. of  these  varieties 
of  a  type  well  known  and  rather  highly  esteemed 
among  ourselves.  It  tmmasks  them  at  once  as  in 
some  sort  pretenders,  as  people  who  devote  a  large 
share  of  their  attention,  while  the  battle  of  life  is 
raging,  to  keeping  open  the  communications  in 
their  rear,  either  for  opportunities  of  retreat  or  in 
order  to  execute  some  brilliant  flank  movement. 
In  other  words,  either  their  self-distrust  or  their 
self-conceit  is  8ho^vn  to  be  excessive.  In  France 
the  battle  of  life  is,  socially  speaking,  nearly  a  pure 
figure  of  speech.     The  foe  is  at  any  rate  impersonal 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  21 

No  one's  individual  attitude  is  hostile  or  suspicious. 
There  is  none  of  the  exciting  competition  which 
with  us  exists  among  friendly  rivals  even.  Hence, 
beyond  those  matters  which  are  essentially  private, 
being  nobody's  business  and  rightfully  appealing  to 
nobody's  interest,  people  generally  have  nothing  to 
conceal.  The  milieu  is  not  only  friendly,  but  it  is 
intelligent.  Neither  timidity  nor  strategy,  of  the 
kind  we  are  familiar  with,  would  avail  much  with 
it.  It  would  be  impossible  to  disguise  them.  The 
"  reserve  "  of  our  young  ladies,  their  true  opinions 
on  public  questions,  the  secret  they  are  thinking 
about,  which  young  men  are  rewarded  by  being 
permitted  gradually  to  discover  as  they  become 
better  and  better  acquainted,  are,  for  example,  pe- 
culiar to  ourselves ;  but  in  France,  especially,  they 
would  be  purposeless  for  the  same  reason  that  in- 
quiries as  to  the  secrets  of  freemasonry  or  the  com- 
position of  patent  medicines  are — namely,  not 
because  they  are  undiscoverable,  but  because  what 
is  worth  knowing  about  them  can  be  divined. 
There  is,  of  course,  the  contrast  between  the  bavard 
and  the  nature  condensee,  but  the  latter  is  none  the 
less  a  frank  and  not  a  secretive  nature.  There  are 
no  prigs. 

Competition  is  a  great  word  with  us,  but  socially 
it  implies  a  solecism.  It  means  egoism,  and  the 
difference  between  our  individualism  and  French 
social  interdependence  is  very  well  shown  in  the 
correspondence   of  our   egoism  to  French  vanity. 


22  FRENCH   TRAITS 

How  far  egoism  may  be  carried,  what  bleakness  it 
may  introduce  into  life,  and  how  it  may  blight 
existence  one  may  easily  guess ;  but  its  baleful  in- 
fluence has  never  been  so  vividly  shown  as  in  that 
very  remarkable  book  published  a  few  years  ago 
and  entitled  "The  Story  of  a  Country  Town."  A 
more  important  contribution  to  sociology  has  not 
been  made  within  the  decade.  No  one  can  have 
read  it  without  being  affected  by  its  gloom,  its  moral 
squalor,  its  ashen  tone.  There  is  nothing  more 
depressing  in  Eussian  fiction,  and,  like  Russian 
fiction,  it  is  wholly  unfactitious.  It  is  a  picture 
entirely  typical,  and  typical  of  one  hesitates  to  say 
how  many  American  communities.  And  no  one  can 
have  read  it  attentively  without  perceiving  that  the 
secret  of  its  dreariness  is  its  picture  of  the  excesses 
of  individualism.  Lack  of  sympathy  vrith  each  other ; 
a  narrow  and  degrading  struggle  for  "  success ; "  a 
crying  competition ;  a  dull,  leaden  introspection ; 
no  community  of  interest,  material  or  ideal,  except 
of  a  grossly  material  religious  ideality  ;  duty  igno- 
rantly  conceived  ;  sacrifice  needlessly  made  ;  gener- 
ous impulses  leading  nowhither,  and  elevated  effort 
clogged  by  the  absence  of  worthy  ends  ;  the  human 
spirit,  in  fine,  thrown  back  on  itself  and  operating, 
so  to  speak,  in  vacuo ;  and  the  partly  tragic,  chiefly 
vulgar,  wholly  sterile  conclusion  of  all  this  Mr. 
Howe  has  painted  for  us  with  a  master-hand.  Be- 
side his  picture  the  wild  orgies  and  bacchanalian 
frenzy  of    a    society  in    decadence  appear    sane. 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  23 

Beside  it,  at  all  events,  French  vanity  seems  anti- 
septic. Vanity  has  its  origin  in  approbativeness, 
and  to  study  to  please  is  a  safeguard  against  many 
evils  in  morals  as  well  as  in  manners.  It  is,  to  be 
sure,  mainly  through  their  vanity  that  the  French 
show  to  us  their  weak  side.  It  is  a  characteristic 
that  in  excess  causes  character  to  atrophy.  It 
stimulates  cowardice  in  the  face  of  ridicule,  and 
leads  infallibly  to  puerile  confusions  of  shadow  and 
substance.  And  the  French  have  far  more  of  it 
than  any  other  people.  Stendhal  never  tires  of 
reproaching  his  countrymen  with  it,  and  declares  it 
responsible  for  his  exile  in  Italy.  Only  the  other 
day  M.  Albert  Wolfi^  whose  competence  is  conspicu- 
ous, declared  it  epidemic,  affirming  French  society 
entire  to  he  f rappee  par  le  fieau  de  la  vanite.  But 
vanity  as  the  French  possess  it,  and  modified  as  it 
is  by  their  all-informing  intelligence,  is  a  not  too 
unpleasant,  as  it  is  an  inevitable,  concomitant  of  the 
spirit  of  society.  Its  absence  would  mean,  logically, 
infinitely  more  loss  than  gain  in  social  relations. 
"  Nothing,"  says  Voltaire,  "  is  so  disagreeable  as  to 
be  obscurely  hanged,"  and  together  with  its  obvious 
vanity  it  is  impossible  not  to  see  in  the  remark  a 
feeling  of  fraternity  as  well. 

In  France,  indeed,  fraternity  is  as  it  were  in  the 
air.  This  sentiment,  which  is  the  poetic  side  of  the 
notion  of  equality,  to  which  the  French  have  been 
so  profoundly  attached  since  the  very  beginnings  of 
modern  society,  during  the  break-up  of  the  Middle 


24  FRENCH   TRAITS 

Ages,  is  to  be  read  in  the  expression  and  demeanor 
of  everyone  to  be  met  with  in  the  streets  as  unmis- 
takably as  it  is  stamped  on  all  the  buildings  belong- 
ing to  the  state.  Insensibly  you  find  yourself  set- 
ting out  with  the  feeling  that  every  stranger  is  ami- 
cably disposed.  Arriving  from  London,  either  at 
Paris  or  at  the  smallest  provincial  town — Calais  it- 
self, say — the  absence  of  individual  competition,  of 
personal  preoccupation,  of  all  the  varied  in  hospitality, 
the  stony,  inaccessible  self-absorption  which  depress 
the  stranger  in  London  whenever  he  is  out  of  hail 
of  an  acquaintance,  the  conspicuous  amenity  every- 
where, suffuse  with  a  profoundly  grateful  warmth 
the  very  cockles  of  the  American's  heart.  At  first 
h  seems  as  if  all  the  world  were  really  one's  friends. 
People  with  such  an  aspect  and  deportment  would 
be,  certainly,  in  New  York  ;  in  New  York  you  would 
feel  almost  as  if  you  could  borrow  money  of  them 
without  seciuity.  You  look  for  the  personal  feeling, 
the  warmth,  the  glow  which  such  evident  amenity 
stimulates  in  your  own  breast.  You  find  no  real 
response.  You  feel  somehow  imposed  upon  and 
resentful.  Nothing  is  less  agreeable  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  heart  than  to  discover  that  it  has  beaten  with 
unreasonable  warmth,  that  the  occasion  really  called 
for  no  indulgence  of  sentiment  You  understand 
Thackeray's  feeling  toward  the  "  distinguished  for- 
eigner" whom  he  met  crossing  the  Channel,  and 
who  "  readily  admitted  the  superiority  of  the  Briton 
on  the  seas  or  elsewhere,"  only  to  discover  himself, 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  2S 

the  voyage  over,  in  his  real  character  of  a  hotel- 
runner — or,  as  Thackeray  puts  it,  "an  impudent, 
sneaking,  swindling  French  humbug."  Nothing 
could  be  more  unreasonable  ;  you  are  not  in  London 
or  New  York, transformed  by  the  millennium,  but  in 
Paris — or  Calais,  as  I  said.  The  Apocalyptic  thou- 
sand years'  reign  of  absolute  satisfactoriness  is  still 
in  the  distant  future.  Self-interest  is  still  a  motive, 
and  if  a  cabman  is  less  extortionate  than  in  New 
York,  or  a  policeman  more  specific  and  personal  in 
his  directions,  or  a  fellow  'bus  passenger  more  affably 
communicative,  it  is  not  to  greater  delicacy  of  moral 
fibre  that  it  should  be  attributed,  but  to  a  universal 
feeling  that  mankind  is  a  fraternity  instead  of  a  vast 
mass  of  armed  neutrals,  and  that,  cceteris  paribus, 
there  is  greater  pleasure  to  be  got  out  of  the  lubri- 
cation than  the  friction  of  points  of  contact  between 
individuals.  This,  elevated  into  a  positive  system, 
produces  the  amenity  which  is  as  clearly  a  boule- 
vard as  it  is  a  salon  characteristic  in  France. 

Bonhomie  is  not  necessarily  honte,  but  it  is  an  ex- 
tremely pleasant  trait  to  find  on  every  hand — in  the 
promenade,  in  shopping,  travelling,  theatre-going, 
gallery-visiting,  wherever,  in  fact,  one  encounters 
his  fellow-men  closely.  It  is  pleasant  not  to  be 
jostled  and  elbowed  in  crowds,  to  be  greeted  in  en- 
tering a  shop,  to  be  spoken  to  civilly  and  copiously 
by  a  casual  companion  on  a  bench  of  the  Champs 
Elysees,  to  be  treated  in  every  way,  in  fine,  humanely 
and  urbanely.     Urbanity  is  a  Latin  word,  and  still 


26  FRENCH  TRAITS 

retains  its  significance  in  Latin  cities,  notably  in 
France  ;  whereas  with  us  it  is  in  general  "  fine  old 
country  gentlemen  "  who  chiefly  illustrate  the  qual- 
ity, and  except  in  the  interior  of  houses,  urban  and 
urbane  are  epithets  of  broadly  diflfering  significance. 
But  charming  as  the  urbanity  of  French  out-door 
existence  is,  that  other  quality  of  bonhomie,  of  good- 
humor,  with  which  it  is  in  France  so  closely  asso- 
ciated— and  of  which  it  is,  indeed,  more  the  out- 
ward expression  than  the  twin  trait  even — is  quite 
as  charming.  Urbane  the  citadins  of  Spain  and 
Italy  are,  almost  invariably  ;  but  their  urbanity  dec- 
orates a  different  quality — a  high-bred  chivalry,  or, 
among  the  lower  classes,  a  fine  natural  simpUcity, 
Fernan  Caballero's  vaunted  naturalidad  in  Spain; 
and  in  Italy  a  rich  geniality  which  sometimes  breaks 
quite  through  the  urbanity  and  recalls  our  o^vn 
Westerner.  The  French  good-humor  seems  idio- 
syncratic. 

It  is  not  very  deep.  Often,  in  fact,  it  shows  itself 
to  be  so  shallow  that  very  bad  humor  is  easUy  per- 
ceived to  lie  in  some  cases  disagreeably  near  the 
surface.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  varied  light  and 
shade  about  the  social  instinct.  Mr.  Henry  James 
permits  the  "  roaring  Yankee  "  of  his  "  The  Point  of 
"View  "  to  speak  of  the  Parisians  in  the  mass  as  "  httle, 
fat,  irritable  people."  In  many  respects  Paris  is  not 
France,  and  probably  nearly  all  the  genus  irritabile 
to  be  found  in  France  is  concentrated  in  the  capital. 
At  Paris  you  certainly  hear,  first  and  last,  a  good 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  27 

deal  of  scolding.  Your  landlady  is  sure  to  scold 
the  servants  from  corridor  to  corridor,  and  these 
latter — such  is  the  spirit  of  fraternity — are  sure  to 
scold  back.  More  or  less  scolding  is  sure  to  force 
itself  upon  your  attention  out  of  doors.  The  cocher 
scolds  his  horse,  the  gendarme  scolds  the  cocher  ; 
now  and  then  you  see  groups  actively  engaged  in 
this  kind  of  mutual  remonstrance.  It  is  to  be  borne 
in  mind  that  they  never  come  to  blows.  "It  costs 
a  lot  to  punch  a  Frenchman's  head,"  I  heard  a  com- 
patriot remark  one  day — this  condition  of  affairs 
demonstrating  a  high  state  of  civihzation,  or  a  deca- 
dence of  manly  spirit  hedging  cowardice  about  with 
tyrannical  regulations,  as  one  chooses  to  consider  it. 
Certainly  one  might  pass  a  Lifetime  in  Paris  without 
witnessing  anything  similar  to  a  scene  of  which  in 
London  once  I  was  an  excited — until  I  observed 
that  a  nearer  policeman  was  a  placid — spectator: 
namely,  a  young  man  choking  and  cu£&ng  a  crying 
young  woman  who  exhibited  every  sign  of  pain  and 
anger,  but  no  sense  of  outrage.  Individualism  fails 
in  various  ways  to  decorate  and  render  attractive 
the  daily  life  of  a  great  city  ;  below  a  certain  rank, 
composed  of  the  surviving  fittest,  moves  an  amor- 
phous mass  of  units,  specifically  unattractive  owing 
to  their  profound  lack  of  interest  in  themselves  and 
their  conspicuous  moral  dejection,  and — ovnng  to 
the  prevalent  individualism — destitute  in  the  mass 
of  any  organic  or  homogeneous  interest.  Even 
where  individualism  has  to  contend  against  the  kind 


28  FRENCH   TRAITS 

of  fraternity  with  which  it  is  not  inconsistent — the 
kind  we  illustrate  in  contrast  with  the  English,  the 
kind  born  of  large  human  sympathies  exercised 
under  a  democratic  system  and  over  a  continent's 
extent — even  in  New  York  I  remember  a  character- 
istic incident  which  one  could  never  expect  to  see 
paralleled  in  Paris.  Two  friends  had  quarrelled  in 
a  Bowery  saloon,  and  having,  in  reporter's  phrase, 
"  adjourned  to  the  sidewalk,"  one  was  speedily  on 
top  of  the  other,  who, .  unarmed  himself,  clutched 
desperately  his  foe's  uplifted  hand  which  held  a 
knife  over  him.  A  crowd  quickly  gathered  and  a 
stalwart  fellow  rushed  toward  the  struggling  pair, 
apparently  to  interfere,  but  drawing  a  clasp-knife 
from  his  poche  americaine  (as  it  is  called  by  French 
tailors),  he  opened  it  and  thrusting  it  into  the  hand 
of  the  under-dog,  exclaimed :  "  Here's  a  knife  for 
you,  too,  young  fellow  !  "  A  policeman  supervened 
and  closed  the  incident.  At  Paris  this  would  have 
seemed  savage  to  a  "  professional "  assassin.  In  five 
cases  out  of  six  the  passion  which  produces  in  Lon- 
don and  New  York  blows  and  pistol-shots,  and  in 
Naples  and  Seville  knife-thrusts,  exhales  itself  in 
vocables,  and  expends  its  force  in  gesticulation. 
The  French  nature  is  frivolous  and  superficial,  is 
the  explanation  given  in  all  the  English  books — the 
books  which,  having  none  of  our  own,  and  knowing 
no  other  language,  we  read  exclusively  ;  querulous- 
ness  takes  the  place  of  passion,  bluster  and  storm- 
ing the  place  of  blows,  adds  the  American  observer 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  29 

— the  implication  being  the  same ;  indeed,  Mr. 
Henry  James  sums  it  up  in  so  many  words  in  one  of 
his  sketches  of  travel :  *'  The  French  are  a  light, 
pleasure-loving  people,  and  the  longest  study  of 
life  on  the  Boulevard  des  Italiens  does  not  change 
the  impression."  Certainly  not,  in  fair  weather  ; 
when  the  skies  are  clear  and  life  is  good  there  is  no 
evidence  of  moping  along  this  thoroughfare.  But, 
seated  at  one  of  the  innumerable  little  tables  that 
fringe  its  gay  terraces,  the  sentimental  traveller 
may  read  in  his  Baedeker  the  suggestive  statement 
that  the  asphalt  beneath  him  was  substituted  by  the 
crafty  Napoleon  III.  for  stone  pavement  because  of 
the  chronic  disposition  of  the  Parisians  to  transform 
the  latter  into  barricades.  Cela  donne  d  penser. 
Readiness  to  get  yourself  killed  upon  slight  provo- 
cation hardly  attests  frivolity,  but  seriousness  in  the 
English  sense  ;  readiness  to  sacrifice  one's  life  in 
defence  of  ideas  witnesses  the  same  quality  in  the 
French  sense.  A  gradual  and  cumulative  progress 
in  every  revolution  of  importance  since  the  days  of 
Divine  Right,  testifies  to  the  seriousness  of  the 
Parisian  people  in  every  sense.  Having  regard  sim- 
ply to  separate  municipalities,  that  of  Paris,  in  fact, 
seems  the  only  serious  one  since  the  Middle  Ages. 

Nothing  is  more  common  with  us,  however,  than 
to  treat  this  same  characteristic  of  the  Parisian  as 
not  only  marked  evidence  of  his  frivolity,  but  'as 
merely  the  occasional  exaggeration  of  his  habitual 
querulousness.     But  nothing  also  is  more  supei"ficial, 


80  FRENCH  TEAITS 

and  one  cannot  live  long  in  Paris  without  perceiving 
that  the  querulousness  which  at  first  strikes  one  is 
itself  simply  the  defect  of  the  quaUty  of  amenity, 
which  is,  after  all,  universal  if  not  profound;  just 
as  blows  and  general  brutaUty  are  the  defect  of  the 
estimable  quahty,  so  highly  prized  in  Anglo-Saxon 
communities,  of  absolute  and  profound  personal 
sincerity.  There  is  nothing  absolute  or  profound 
about  French  amenity.  Rightly  apprehended  the 
nature  of  the  quality  excludes  the  notion  of  pro- 
fundity. It  is  rather  a  gloss,  a  veneer,  a  mere  out- 
ward husk,  but  the  veneer  and  husk  of  that  very 
solid  feeling  of  fraternity  which  is  so  integral  a 
part  of  the  French  gospel.  In  England,  and  among 
the  large  and  increasing  class  of  anglicized  Ameri- 
cans in  this  country,  fraternity  is  still,  of  course,  a 
subject  of  philosophic  controversy — the  school  of 
Mill  on  one  side,  thinkers  like  Mill's  implacable 
critic.  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  on  the  other. 
Sir  James  Stephen,  for  example,  whose  feehng  com- 
parison of  the  Comtist  regard  for  humanity  to  *'  a 
childless  woman's  love  for  a  lap-dog  "  is  a  fair  meas- 
ure of  his  sympathetic  quahty,  maintains  that  "  the 
French  way  of  loving  the  human  race  is  the  one  of 
their  many  sins  which  it  is  most  difficult  to  forgive," 
and  that  "  it  is  not  love  that  one  wants  from  the 
great  mass  of  mankind,  but  respect  and  justice." 
But  the  brutaUty  of  the  Anglo-Indian  is  apt  to  be  as 
mistaken  as  it  is  brilliant.  Respect  and  justice  are 
precisely  the  quaUties  of  French  fraternity,  and  the 


THE  SOCIAL  INSTINCT  81 

"  love  "  with  which  Sir  James  Stephen  objects  to 
being  "  daubed  "  is  quite  foreign  to  it.  The  propa- 
gandism  of  the  Revolution  was  rational,  not  senti- 
mental. No  doubt  it  and  other  manifestations  of 
French  feehng  toward  foreigners  shine  in  friendli- 
ness and  kindliness  by  contrast  with  the  respect  and 
justice  accorded  by  Sir  James  Stephen's  compatriots 
to  their  fellows  in  India  and  Ireland,  but  impatience 
with  prejudice  and  tradition  and  an  ardor  for  the 
rational  and  the  real  are  their  central  characteristics. 
The  Frenchman  feels  under  no  necessity  of  either 
disliking  you  or  else  becoming  famiHar  by  intruding 
his  personality — which  seems  a  not  uncommon  An- 
glo-Saxon affliction.  We  know  best,  perhaps,  how 
to  treat  each  other  in  intimacy  ;  Frenchmen,  in  the 
general  situation.  Fraternite  has  slight  relations  to 
"  Friendship,"  as  Thoreau  rhapsodizes  about  it, 
and  as  the  classic  examples  illustrate  it.  In  friend- 
ship the  individual  element  is  intensified,  in  frater- 
nity it  is  extenuated.  Fraternity,  in  a  word,  is  not 
a  militant  virtue  ;  it  is  simply  the  unfailing  accom- 
paniment of  the  social  instinct,  and  in  France,  there- 
fore, is  universally  accepted  so  much  as  a  matter  of 
course,  as  the  necessary  and  natural  basis  of  human 
relations,  that  its  praise  is  become  merely  subject- 
matter  for  perorations,  political  and  other,  as  the 
praise  of  freedom,  for  example,  is  with  the  English 
and  with  us.  And  when  such  a  sentiment  becomes 
a  common-place,  when  such  an  idea  comes  popu- 
larly to  be  esteemed  a  platitude  rather  than  a  prin- 


32  FRENCH  TRAITS 

ciple,  men  no  longer  fall  upon  one  another's  necks 
in  illustration  of  its  potency  and  in  witness  of  their 
personal  adhesion  to  it  All  the  same,  it  loses  little 
of  its  vitality.  The  members  of  those  large  families 
which,  as  an  English  writer  astutely  remarks,  are 
not  apt  to  be  very  "  civil-spoken  things,"  certainly 
do  not  act  among  us  as  if  they  had  constantly  in 
mind  the  precepts  of  the  133d  Psalm,  with  which, 
nevertheless,  they  may  be  presumed  to  be  in  full 
accord.  "A  good  father  in  conversation  with  his 
children  or  wife  is  not  perpetually  embracing  them," 
says  Thackeray ;  but  the  fact  of  relationship  is  none 
the  less  potent  as  a  pervasive  influence  on  conduct 
and  demeanor.  And  so  the  mutual  activities  of  a 
society  which,  like  that  of  France,  resembles  very 
closely  a  large  family,are  thus  influenced  in  a  very 
deUghtful  way,  if  not  to  an  intense  degree,  by  the 
decorous  and  decorative  virtue  of  fraternal  kindli- 
ness and  good  feeling.  The  home,  the  interior,  may 
mean  less  to  Frenchmen  than  it  does  to  us,  but  the 
community  means  incontestably  more,  and  the  feel- 
ing for  country  easily  becomes  supreme. 

Patriotism  in  fact,  takes  the  place  of  religion  in 
France.  In  the  service  of  la  patrie  the  doing  of 
one's  duty  is  elevated  into  the  sphere  of  exalted 
emotion.  To  say  that  the  French  are  more  patriotic 
than  other  peoples  would  be  to  say  what  is  in  its 
nature  incapable  of  substantiation.  But  I  think  it 
incontestable  that,  more  than  any  other  people,  they 
make  patriotism  the  source  and  subject  of  their 


THE  SOCIAL  INSTINCT  33 

profoundest  emotional  life.  Only  here  do  they  lay 
aside  reason  and  abandon  intelligence  to  surrender 
themselves  voluntarily  to  the  sway  of  instinct  and 
passion.  Only  in  regard  to  la  France  do  they  per- 
mit themselves  illusions.  Only  here  does  sentiment 
triumph  freely  and  completely  over  calculation. 
Patriotism  thus  plays  a  far  larger  part  in  their 
national  existence  than  in  that  of  other  peoples. 
None  of  its  manifestations  seem  absurd  to  them. 
The  classic  remark  regarding  the  charge  of  Bala- 
clava, "C'est  magnifique,  mais  ce  n'est  pas  la  guerre," 
is,  to  be  sure,  a  protest  against  the  excesses  of  cor- 
poralism.  But  such  a  sacrifice  in  direct  illustra- 
tion of  patriotism  would  be  regarded  in  France 
almost  as  an  opportunity ;  it  would  be  looked 
upon  as  the  early  Christians  looked  upon  martyr- 
dom. 

Sir  John  Fortescue,  exiled  in  France  during  the 
Wars  of  the  Roses,  writes  :  "  It  is  cowardise  and 
lack  of  hartes  and  corage  that  kepith  the  French- 
men from  rising,  and  not  povertye  :  which  corage 
no  Frenche  man  hath  like  to  the  English  man.  It 
hath  been  often  seen  in  Englond  that  three  or  four 
thefes  for  povertie  hath  set  upon  8  true  men  and 
robbed  them  al.  But  it  hath  not  been  seen  in 
Fraunce  that  vii  or  viij  thefes  have  been  hardy  to 
robbe  iii  or  iv  true  men.  Wherefor  it  is  right  seld 
that  Frenchmen  be  hanged  for  robberye  for  that 
they  have  no  hertys  to  do  so  terrible  an  acte.  There 
be  therefor  mo  men  hangyed  in  Englond  in  a  yere 
3 


34  FBENOH  TRAITS 

for  robberye  and  manslaughter  than  there  be 
hangid  in  Fraunce  for  such  crime  in  vij  yers."  Sir 
John  writes,  you  will  observe,  very  much  in  the 
spirit  of  modern  English  criticism  of  the  French. 
This  is  the  feeling  of  which  Thackeray,  for  example, 
can  never  free  himself,  which  inspires  "Punch,"  which 
all  the  Paris  correspondents  display,  which  underlies 
every  French  allusion  in  our  own  anglicized  journals. 
In  citing  Sir  John,  however,  M.  Taine,  who  shame- 
lessly records  as  current  statistics  "  42  cases  of  high- 
way robbery  in  France  against  738  in  England,"  ex- 
plains, in  a  footnote,  the  reason  for  this  lamentable 
lack  of  "  hertys  "  on  the  part  of  his  countrymen. 
"  The  English,"  he  says,  "  always  forget  to  be  pohte, 
and  miss  the  fine  distinctions  of  things.  Under- 
stand here  brutal  courage,  the  disputatious  and  inde- 
pendent instinct.  The  French  race,  and  in  general 
the  Gallic  race,  is  perhaps  among  all  the  most  prod- 
igal of  its  life." 

That  is  the  diflference,  exactly.  The  social  and 
the  individual  instinct  operate  here,  we  perceive, 
each  in  its  own  way.  One  has  only  to  think  of  the 
title  of  France  to  be  called  a  military  nation  (even 
Prussian  military  terminology  is  French),  or  of  the 
suggestions  contained  in  the  word  "  barricade  "  to 
appreciate  how  reckless  of  everything  men  selfishly 
prize  in  this  world  are  all  Frenchmen  when  patriotic 
takes  the  place  of  personal  feeling.  No  country,  it 
is  probable,  except  perhaps  our  own  Southern  States, 
ever  made  such  immense  sacrifices  of  life  and  treas* 


THE  SOCIAL  INSTINCT  35 

ure,  after  all  reasonable  hope  was  over,  as  France 
did  between  the  fall  of  ^^etz  and  the  Treaty  of 
Frankfort  In  no  other  country  would  such  resist- 
ance to  overwhelming  force  as  that  of  Gambetta 
have  proved  a  statesman's  chief  title  to  fame  ;  no- 
where else  would  even  the  enemies  of  such  a  man 
so  readily  admit  that  to  raise  iU-armed,  half -starved, 
under-aged,  raw  levies,  and  oppose  them  to  dis- 
cipHned  troops  of  twice  their  numbers  with  a  stead- 
fastness that  had  outlived  hope,  was  to  save  the 
honor  of  the  country.  The  public  opinion  which 
thus  magnifies  patriotism  into  a  religion  is  a  force 
of  which  it  is  difficult  to  appreciate,  and  impossible 
to  exaggerate  the  strength.  A  vivid  illustration  of 
it  is  given  in  an  incident  of  one  of  the  stories 
grouped  by  M.  Ludovic  Halevy  under  the  title, 
"  L'Invasion."  A  poor  woman,  whose  husband  and 
son  had  been  taken  by  the  last  conscription,  ejacu- 
lates, as  the  mobiles  are  leaving  the  village  :  "  What 
cowards  the  French  must  be  to  let  themselves  be 
dragged  to  war  like  that !  "  The  utterance  was 
a  cry  of  individualism  wrung  from  the  egotism  of  a 
mother's  heart,  but  M.  Halevy  chronicles  it  as  ex- 
traordinary, and  it  only  serves  thus  to  emphasize 
the  strength  and  universality  of  the  feeling  against 
which  it  protested,  and  of  striking  instances  of 
which  M.  Hal6vy's  Httle  volume  is  full. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  record  of  heroic  self-sacrifice  on 
the  altar  of  country  which  in  certain  qualities  it 
would  be   hard  to   match.     The  tone  is  low  and 


36  FRENCH  TRAITS 

quiet,  there  is  no  exaggeration,  and  there  is  no  dis- 
guise of  the  near  proximity  to  gayety  in  which  Gal- 
lic gravity  always  exists.  I  venture  to  translate  the 
following  incident  related  in  M.  Hal6vy's  words  by 
a  nurse  in  the  military  hospital  at  Vendome  :  "  I 
remember  especially,"  says  the  infirmier,  "  a  young 
man,  almost  a  child — he  was  eighteen  years  old.  He 
was  brought  to  us,  with  a  ball  in  the  chest,  Decem- 
ber 16th,  He  had  been  wounded  quite  near  Ven- 
dome. He  died  three  days  afterward.  He  must 
have  suffered  much,  for  his  wound  was  very  deep 
indeed.  He  made  no  complaint,  however.  He  told 
us  that  he  was  an  only  son — that  he  had  volunteered 
in  July,  at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  His  mother  op- 
posed his  project,  wept  bitterly,  and  tried  to  retain 
him.  But  he  had  done  that  as  a  duty.  He  had  set 
out  in  the  Army  of  Sedan  ;  he  had  succeeded  in  escap- 
ing through  Belgium  ;  he  had  continued  the  campaign 
in  the  Array  of  the  Loire  ;  he  had  become  a  sergeant. 
Before  dying  he  confessed,  and  in  the  presence  of 
everybody  he  received  the  sacrament  with  a  wonder- 
ful tranquillity.  During  the  three  days  in  which  he 
was  dying — for  we  had  seen  at  once  that  he  was  lost 
— he  gave  way  only  when  he  spoke  of  his  mother; 
then  the  tears  stood  in  his  eyes  and  he  gazed  long 
at  a  photogi'aph  of  her  which  he  had  taken  with 
him.  He  asked  pardon  of  her  for  the  grief  his 
death  would  cause  her.  He  had  asked  us  to  lay 
aside  his  tunic  with  his  chevrons  of  sergeant  to  be 
sent  to  his  mother  after  the  war.     He  died  kissing 


THE   SOCIAL   INSTINCT  37 

iis  little  photograph.  We  were  greatly  embarrassed. 
We  did  not  know  whether  we  ought  to  keep  this  pho- 
tograph for  the  mother  or  to  put  it  in  the  coffin.  It 
seemed  to  us  better  to  put  it  with  him  in  the  bier, 
and  that  is  what  we  did." 

I  think  no  one  can  fail  to  remark  the  admira- 
ble simplicity  of  this,  quite  unalloyed  either  with 
the  solemn  intensity  that  is  undoubtedly  Germanic 
or  with  the  bravado  we  are  ludicrously  apt  to  fan- 
cy natural  to  the  Frenchman.  There  is  a  distinct 
shade  of  elasticity  of  spirit  noticeable  in  the  moral 
attitude  of  this  youth  that  is  tj'pically  French.  A 
contained  exaltation  quite  unassociated  with  what 
we  ordinarily  mean  by  conscious  renunciation  seems 
to  be  his  support  or  rather  his  stimulus.  He  is  not 
a  hero  in  any  explicit  way  ;  his  social  side  is  up- 
permost. The  same  phenomenon  is  observable  in 
death-bed  scenes  in  which  for  the  sacraments  of  the 
church  the  decoration  of  the  state  is  substituted. 
And  this  discloses  the  real  truth  about  this  patriot- 
ism which  is  the  religion  of  Frenchmen,  in  whose 
sphere  calculation  is  lost  in  sentiment  and  interest 
is  transmuted  into  self-sacrifice — namely,  that  it  is 
the  sublimation  of  the  social  instinct  in  a  more  emi- 
nent degree  and  more  conspicuous  manner  than  the 
patriotic  sentiment  of  any  other  people  in  the  world. 
All  purely  personal  feeHng  is  absorbed  in  it.  Every 
personal  aspiration  is  satisfied  by  it.  To  an  American 
dying  of  a  wound  received  in  the  defence  of  his  coun- 
try the  presentation  of  a  bit  of  red  ribbon  by  the 


38  FRENCH  TRAITS 

government  of  his  country  would  undoubtedly  seem 
a  barren  performance  enough,  ffis  personal  sense  of 
duty  discharged,  of  a  supreme  sacrifice  unselfishly 
made,  would  in  such  an  hour  fill  his  mind  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  any  demonstrations  of  a  social  order  that 
the  compatriots  whom  he  was  about  to  leave  forever 
could  make.  Dying  with  us  is  a  private  affair  ;  the 
association  with  it  of  the  paraphernaha  of  life  is  apt 
to  jar  upon  our  sense.  "The  world  has  been  my 
country,  to  do  good  my  religion,"  is  a  more  con- 
soling dying  thought  than  the  dulce  et  decorum  est 
of  Horace,  even  on  the  battle-field.  We  have  been 
from  our  youth  up  so  accustomed  to  personal  con- 
centration, so  habituated  to  being  in  the  world  but 
not  of  it,  so  used  to  considering  our  environment 
hostile,  that  this  feeling  remains  even  if  we  have 
ceased  to  look  upon  heaven  as  our  true  home  and 
the  celestial  hosts  as  our  real  family.  Emerson's 
breezy  lines, 

"Good-bj",  proud  world,  I'm  going  home, 
Thou'rt  not  my  friend,  and  I'm  not  thine," 

find  an  echo  in  all  our  hearts,  but  wherever  one 
meets  with  anything  of  the  kind  in  French  litera- 
ture the  strain  is  factitious,  the  sentiment  borders 
on  bravado,  and  we  feel  instinctively  that  what  dis- 
guises itself  as  longing  is  really  lament. 

Now,  the  moment  we  appreciate  that  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  French  people  it  is  the  social  rather  thao 


THE  SOCIAL   INSTINCT  39 

the  individual  instinct  which  predominates,  we  can 
see  how  this  is  the  secret  of  the  French,  how  it  ac- 
counts for  the  differences  between  them  and  us  as 
individuals,  and  for  our  inveterate  misconception  of 
them  ;  how  they  in  distinction  from  ourselves  live 
for  the  present  world,  are  alive  to  actuality,  desire 
passionately  to  please,  are  passionately  pleased  with 
admiration,  have  no  talent  for  renunciation,  but 
a  very  genius  for  expression  and  expansion  ;  how 
practical  and  prosaic  is  their  disregard  for  certain 
ideal  qualities  of  the  soul  which  are  with  us  of  a 
"  sacred  and  secret "  nature ;  how  little  personal  life 
they  have  ;  how  much  more  manners  count  with 
them  than  does  character,  beyond  those  points 
where  both  are  tolerable.  And  we  can  see  also  how, 
nationally  and  organically,  they  have,  since  the  com- 
munal revolution  of  the  twelfth  century,  been  not 
merely  the  chief  but  the  only  highly  organized  peo- 
ple which  has  succeeded  to  the  civilizing  work  of 
the  Roman  Empire  in  itself  essaying  social  experi- 
mentation, if  not  in  the  interest,  at  least  to  the 
profit,  of  mankind.  "  There  are  no  questions,"  said 
Gambetta,  superbly,  "but  social  questions."  The 
apothegm  formulates  the  spiritual  instinct  of  France 
since  the  days  of  her  national  beginnings.  It  for- 
mulates also,  I  think,  the  instinct  of  the  future. 
That  is  why  France  is  so  inexhaustibly  interesting 
— because  in  one  way  or  another  she,  far  more  than 
any  other  nation,  has  always  represented  the  aspira- 
tions of  civilization,  because  she  has  always  sought 


40  FRENCH   TRAITS 

development  in  common,  and  because  in  this  re- 
spect the  ideal  she  has  always  followed  is  the  ideal 
of  the  future.  It  is,  at  any  rate,  inseparable  from 
the  visions  which  a  material  age  permits  to  the  few 
idealists  of  to-day. 


n 

MORALITY 


MORALITY 

Since  Professor  Lounsbury's  not  too  sympathetic 
but  admirably  thorough-going  biography,  it  has 
become  possible  to  cite  Cooper  again.  In  one  of 
his  sea-stones,  a  masterpiece  in  every  way,  but 
quite  as  remarkable  for  its  "  international "  as  for 
its  purely  dramatic  and  human  interest,  Cooper 
contrives  a  trifling  incident  which  felicitously  illus- 
trates the  habitual  Anglo-Saxon  attitude  toward 
the  French  whenever  there  is  any  question  of  moral- 
ity. The  bluff,  hearty,  "  thoroughly  English  "  com- 
mander of  a  seventy-four  during  the  wars  against 
the  first  Republic  has  just  succeeded,  as  he  imagines, 
in  burning  the  little  French  privateer  Le  Feu  Fol- 
let,  with  all  on  board,  after  the  fashion  becoming  a 
successor  of  Drake  and  Raleigh,  and  better  adapted 
to  the  end  of  Britannia's  ruling  of  the  waves  than 
reminiscent  of  the  spirit  which  is  supposed  once  to 
have  animated  what  Mr.'  Frederic  Harrison  trench- 
antly calls  "  the  rotten  carcass  of  chivalry."  As 
the  fire-ship  was  bearing  down  on  the  French  vessel, 
strains  of  music  had  reached  the  ears  of  the  English. 
Ghita  Cai-accioli — a  relative  of  the  Pi'ince  whom 
Nelson  was  to  hang  the  following  day — was  singing 


44  FRENCH  TRAITS 

to  the  stnimming  of  her  guitar  on  the  Frenchman's 
deck  in  the  moonUght,  her  lover  Raoul,  the  hand- 
some young  privateersman  himself,  by  turns  listen- 
ing with  delight  and  abstractedly  reflecting  on  the 
perverse  piety  which  forbade  his  Italian  mistress  to 
wed  a  confessed  unbeUever — one  of  the  prettiest  and 
most  delicately  touclied  love  scenes  to  be  found  in 
fiction.  The  sincere  and  unsentimental  Captain 
Cuft'e  ends  his  report  of  his  exploit  to  the  Admi- 
ral:  "  The  lugger  was  filled  with  loose  women  ;  our 
people  hearing  them  singing  their  philosophical  and 
iiTeUgious  songs  as  they  approached  with  the  4re- 
vessel." 

Cooper  was  very  happy  in  this  way.  A  genera- 
tion ago  he  furnished  an  excellent  corrective  to  the 
then  popular  notion  of  the  ex  vi  termini  baseness  of 
American  Tories  during  the  Revolutionary  period ; 
and  his  portraiture  of  American  character  includes 
types  which  for  intimately  unflattering  verisimili- 
tude were  a  liberal  education  in  catholic  temper 
and  the  faculty  of  seeing  one's  self  as  one  really  is. 
At  the  present  moment,  while  English  influences 
are  permeating  our  political  and  social  activities 
from  philosophy  to  fashion,  we  have  certainly  little 
need  of  Cooper  to  persuade  us  that  EngHshmen 
have  the  qualities  of  their  defects.  But  his  treat- 
ment of  French  character,  as  in  "Le  Feu  Follet," 
for  example,  and  the  shght  stress  he  lays  on  it — as 
if  it  were  not  at  all  a  novel  view  that  he  was  taking 
— reminds  one  of  an   epoch  in  American  feeling 


MORALITY  45 

when  Franklin's  reception  in  France  and  Lafayette's 
generous  enthusiasm  were  more  than  memories ; 
when  the  circumstance  that  "the  streets  of  Paris 
rang  with  the  name  of  Washington"  was  not  as- 
cribed to  Versailles  diplomacy,  and  when  liberal 
spirits,  at  least,  appreciated  that  even  in  such  funda- 
mental matters  as  morality,  la  difference  need 
not — as  Stendhal  asserts  that  it  does  in  fact — pro- 
duce la  haine. 

Morality  is  indeed  a  fundamental  matter,  and 
French  morality  differs  fundamentally  from  our 
own.  But  this  is  only  all  the  more  reason  for  re- 
placing censoriousness  by  candor  in  any  considera- 
tion of  it.  And  the  first  admission  which  candor  > 
compels  us  to  make  is  the  tmfairness  of  estimating 
the  French  moral  fibre  by  what  ours  would  be  if 
subjected  to  the  same  standards  and  influenced  by 
the  same  circumstances.  Yet  this  is  an  error  that 
we  make  continually.  Consciously  or  unconsciously 
we  conceive  our  manners  and  character  as  a  con- 
stant quantity,  and  reflect  on  the  fate  which  indis- 
putably would  overtake  our  morals  if  we  should 
adopt  French  ethics.  And  by  retaining  our  man- 
ners and  character,  and  adopting  their  ethics,  we 
should  no  more  attain  the  French  moral  result  than, 
to  turn  the  case  around  a  little,  Sophocles,  Solomon, 
Horace,  Baphael,  Goethe,  would  have  attained  their 
success  had  they  committed  their  characteristic  in- 
discretions amid  the  environment  which  produced 
Jonathan  Edwards  and  Cotton  Mather.     The  truth, 


46  FRENCH   TRAITS 

of  coiirse,  is,  that  the  French  diflfer  from  us  as  much 
in  constitution  and  manners  as  in  ethics.  French 
morality  is  a  direct  derivative  of  the  social  instinct. 
Owing  to  the  development  of  this  instinct  among 
them  morality  is  rather  a  social  than  an  individual 
force,  and  the  key  to  its  nature  is  to  be  found  in 
the  substitution  of  honor  for  duty  as  a  main-spring 
of  action  and  a  regulator  of  conduct.  The  distinc- 
tion is  a  very  plain,  a  very  real  one.  Between  the 
two  there  is  all  the  difference  that  there  is  between 
the  inspiration,  say,  of  Lovelace's  fine  lines : 

"  I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much 
Loved  I  not  honor  more," 

and  that  of  Wordsworth's  apostrophe, 

"  Stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God  !  ** 

Carlyle  indicates  very  forcibly  what  seems  to  us 
the  inadequacy  of  the  French  ethical  ideal  in  con- 
cluding one  of  the  brilliant  papers  now  buried  for  a 
positive  generation  under  the  title  "  Past  and  Pre- 
sent." He  says  :  "  '  These  poor,  persecuted  Scotch 
Covenanters,'  said  I  to  my  inquiring  Frenchman,  in 
such  stinted  French  as  stood  at  command,  '  Us  en 
appelaienV — 'Ala post erite'  interrupted  he,  helping 
me  out.  ^  Ah!  Monsieur,  non,  mille  fois  non  !  They 
appealed  to  the  eternal  God,  not  to  posterity  at  alL 
C'etait  different !  ' "  Every  Anglo-Saxon  reading 
this  instinctively  agrees  with  Carlyle  that  it  was 
different  indeed.      Any  Frenchman,  on  the  other 


MORALITY  47 

hand,  would  ascribe  the  distinction  to  the  vague  ex- 
altation of  fanaticism.  To  the  French  sense  such  a 
distinction  indicates  a  lack  of  sanity,  of  that  measure 
to  which — if  one  may  say  so  without  paradox — the 
French  are  almost  fanatically  attached.  "In  all 
questions  concerning  the  conscience,"  the  French- 
man would  say,  "  the  important  point  is  whether  or 
no  the  conscience  decides  aright.  The  immense 
value  Anglo-Saxons  attach  to  its  activity,  its  sensi- 
tiveness, becomes  at  once  a  misleading  and  fatal 
estimation  whenever  it  decides  wrongly  ;  in  such 
instances  the  value  attached  to  it  only  gives  author- 
ity to  error.  Fanaticism,  that  most  unpleasant  and 
least  useful  condition  of  the  mind,  instantly  ensues. 
The  only  real  appeal  in  cases  of  disputed  decision — 
cases  like  that  of  the  Scotch  Covenanters  just  men- 
tioned— is  to  posterity,  to  time,  to  the  universal  con- 
science, the  common  consciousness  of  mankind.  In 
any  other  sense  than  this — the  sense  in  which  vox 
populi  and  vox  Dei  are  really  identical — any  talk 
about  the  arbitrament  of  the  eternal  God  is  too 
vague  to  be  useful,  and  being  vague  too  solemn  not 
to  be  harmful.  Even  one  of  your  writers  who,  as  M. 
Challemel-Lacour  has  testified,  seems  to  us  to  put 
an  altogether  exaggerated  estimate  upon  conduct 
and  morality,  a  writer  who  observes  that  a  Methodist 
navvy  '  deals  successfully  with  nearly  the  whole  of 
life,'  while  the  'dissolute,  gifted,  brilliant  grandee,* 
whom  he  compares  with  him,  '  is  all  abroad  in  it,'  is 
nevertheless  forced  to  say  that  with  conscience  one 


48  FRENCH  TRAITS 

has  *  done  nothing  until  he  has  got  to  the  bottom  of 
conscience  and  made  it  tell  him  right.' " 

One  never  talks  with  a  Frenchman  on  these  mat- 
ters without  perceiving  that  to  be  right,  to  be  at  the 
centre  of  things,  not  to  be  duped,  is  to  his  mind  the 
summuni  bonum.  It  is  the  premise  from  which  he 
invariably  sets  out ;  it  is,  in  fact,  a  passion  with  him ; 
of  many  Frenchmen  it  can  even  be  said,  as  Taine 
said  of  Murimee,  that  they  are  the  dupes  of  their 
distrust.  To  rely  impUcitly  upon  one's  conscience 
is,  of  course,  a  famous  way  of  being  profoundly 
duped.  It  is  the  infallible  accompaniment  of  fana- 
ticism ;  fanaticism  is  bete  ;  to  be  bite  is  impossible — 
the  very  notion  of  it  insuflferable.  In  this  way  the 
Frenchman  comes  naturally  to  think  very  little  of 
conscience,  to  have  very  little  to  do  with  it.  His 
reliance  is  upon  an  outward,  not  the  inward  monitor, 
the  voice  of  society  in  general,  the  suggestions  of 
culture,  the  dictates  of  science.  His  literature  con- 
tains no  analogue  of  Bunyan  or  of  Johnson.  To 
him  the  admonition,  "  the  kingdom  of  God  is  within 
you,"  is  addressed  to  the  heart,  the  emotions,  the 
soul — an  aphorism  consolatory  and  reHgious,  but 
having  less  than  nothing  to  do  vrith  the  grand  ob- 
ject of  daily  life,  the  great  secret  of  success  in  this 
world — namely,  the  certainty  that  one's  light  is  not 
darkness. 

It  is  well  known  that  our  view,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
view,  is  just  the  reverse  of  this.  We  exalt  the  func- 
tions of  conscience,  and  we  are  not  concerned,  so 


MORALITY 

long  as  we  obey  its  behests,  whether  or  no  at  some 
future  time  it  may  not  give  us  different  counsel  and 
so,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  stultify  itself  as  a 
guide.  We  admit  its  fallibility  in  advance,  and  it 
surprises  us  that  this  should  surprise  the  French 
observer.  Where  is  infallibility  to  be  found,  we 
ask  ;  it  seems  credulous  and  simple  to  seek  it.  The 
important  thing  is  to  act  up  to  the  best  light  that 
you  have,  in  accordance  with  the  first  part  of  Bishop 
Wilson's  celebrated  maxim  ;  the  other  part  will  in 
this  way,  we  vaguely  feel,  gradually  come  to  take 
care  of  itself.  We  have  no  passion  for  pure  reason. 
We  have,  in  fact,  so  little  sympathy  with  mere  clev- 
erness, as  we  call  it,  with  exclusive  devotion  to  the 
things  of  the  mind,  that  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  ap- 
preciate how  a  society  can  be  great  and  distinguished 
which  is,  like  France,  wholly  given  over  to  them, 
and  which  in  matters  of  personal  conduct,  to  us  the 
all-important  concern  of  life,  obeys  not  the  inward 
monitor  of  conscience  but  the  outward  constraint  of 
public  opinion.  This  view  the  French  themselves 
invariably  ascribe  to  Puritanism,  which  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at,  considering  the  substantial  unanimity 
with  which  the  partisans  of  Puritanism  among  us 
make  the  same  ascription.  But  what  is  the  origin 
of  Puritanism  itself  ?  The  truth  is  that  Puritanism 
is  merely  the  excess  of  the  individual  spirit  mani- 
fested in  the  exaltation  of  conscience.  It  is  itself  an 
effect.  The  intimate,  personal  view  of  morality  is 
held  by  peoples  and  persons  who  never  came  into 
4 


60  FRENCH  TRAITS 

contact  with  Puritanism.  It  is  as  common  in  Nor- 
way as  in  New  England,  and  is  as  firmly  held  where 
Luther  re-enthroned  the  individual  conscience  as 
it  is  wherever  the  Shorter  Catechism  is  expounded. 
Its  only  foes  are  the  Catholic  Church,  which  absorbs 
the  devotion  of  the  communities  in  which  it  reigna, 
and  that  extremely  elaborate  social  development 
which  the  humanity  of  Catholicism  indirectly  fos- 
ters. Everywhere  in  Protestant  and  personal  com- 
munities public  opinion  itself  shares  Owen  Mere- 
dith's sentiment :  "The  Crowd-made  Conscience  is 
a  Harlot  bold  " — a  sentiment  fairly  swaggering  with 
individual  dignity. 

M.  Benan  calls  glory  "  the  thing  which,  after  all, 
has  the  best  chance  of  being  not  altogether  vanity." 
That  would  indeed  be  news  to  the  Preacher,  would 
it  not  ?  The  Preacher's  social  instinct  was  far  less 
developed  than  M.  Kenan's.  How  often  have  we 
not,  all  of  us,  ridiculed  the  French  respect  for  la 
gloire,  having  ourselves  an  intimate  conviction  that  in 
the  entire  catalogue  of  vanities  there  is  none  so  hol- 
low as  this  same  extrinsic  applause.  No  one  would 
of  course  deny  that  there  are  individuals  among  us 
who  care  a  great  deal  for  this  vanity,  but  it  is,  in 
fine,  distinctly  not  our  ideal,  and  we  are  saved  in 
great  measure  from  any  danger  of  becoming  openly 
enamoured  of  it  by  the  abundance,  the  universality — 
and  one  might  add  the  sincerity — of  our  cant  upon 
the  subject.  But  the  French  are  unblushing  about 
it,  and  probably  incorrigible.     It  is  another  phase  of 


MORALITY  51 

their  anxiety  to  be  in  the  right — that  is,  to  think 
rightly,  without  passion  or  personal  prejudice,  about 
any  given  matter — which  leads  them  to  place  a  high 
value  upon  extrinsic  opinion,  and  to  shun  the  eccen- 
tricity and  whimsical  fanaticism  which  are  so  often 
the  concomitants  of  concentration  and  which,  what- 
ever the  verdict  of  Carlyle's  eternal  God,  they 
think  posterity  at  all  events  will  disapprove,  even  if 
current  public  opinion  be  mistaken.  Thus  by  the 
operation  of  a  natural  law  public  opinion  becomes  in 
its  turn  much  more  worthy  of  being  followed  than 
it  is  where  it  occupies  the  subordinate  place  we  as- 
sign it ;  its  qualities  increase  in  proportion  to  its 
dignity.  It  should  be  remembered  that  the  pursuit 
of  la  gloire  in  France  is  a  very  different  thing  from 
the  analogous  seeking  of  the  bubble  reputation  with 
us,  and  that  in  proportion  as  the  prize  becomes  im- 
portant, the  efifort  to  obtain  it  becomes  laudable. 

And  the  substitution  of  honor  for  duty  as  a  moral 
standard  has,  generally,  one  immense  advantage 
which,  as  the  most  superficial  acquaintance  with 
them  discloses,  the  French  unquestionably  enjoy. 
Honor's  dictates  are  plain.  Those  of  duty  are  often 
obscure.  Society  knows  what  it  esteems  and  what 
it  despises.  Conscience  is  often  confused,  often  in 
need  now  of  enlightenment  now  of  quickening. 
The  result  is  that  in  the  moral  sphere  the  French 
escape  that  vacillation  so  characteristic  of  ourselves. 
All  is  plain-sailing  before  them  ;  their  chart  is  dis- 
tinct and  they  mean  to  follow  it.     Morally  speaking 


62  FRENCH   TRAITS 

we  illustrate  Mr.  Lincoln's  caution,  on  the  other  hand, 
and  never  "  cross  Fox  Eiver  before  we  come  to  it" 
The  difference  is  that  between  a  written  and  un- 
written political  constitution  ;  we  have  an  immense 
amount  of  common-law  morality,  so  to  speak. 
Many  of  our  conscientious  people  do  things  which 
other  conscientious  persons  would  not  do  ;  the  lar- 
gest publisher  of  one  of  our  cities  publishes  Zola 
for  all  America  ;  the  largest  bookseller  of  the  same 
city  will  not  vend  Zola  ;  yet  he,  again,  sells  freely  the 
"Memoirs  of  Cora  Pearl"  You  feel  that  we  cannot 
all  of  us  be  hitting  the  mark.  Many  of  us  do  things 
at  one  moment  that  we  would  not  at  another ;  many 
of  us  justify  in  ourselves  to-day  conduct  of  which 
yesterday  we  disapproved.  Our  standard  wavers 
because  it  is  upheld  by  a  grace  that  is  intermittent 
The  conscience,  finding  itself  deceived  by  some  false 
alarm,  relaxes  its  vigilance  in  some  parallel  instance 
with  unhappy  results.  Our  temptations  vary.  Our 
moral  life  becomes  a  struggle,  in  comparison  with 
which  the  Frenchman's  is  serene.  We  may  say,  I 
think,  that  the  prayer  "  lead  us  not  into  temptation  " 
is  rarely  on  his  lips  or  in  his  heart.  His  attitude 
toward  temptation  is  not  one  of  timorousness.  He 
believes  rather  with  La  Bruyere  that  "  everything  is 
temptation  to  him  who  fears  temptation."  He  does 
not  seek  to  fortify  himself  against  it  by  acquiring 
the  habit  of  self-deniaL  He  does  not  contemplate 
the  notion  of  yielding  in  spite  of  himself,  of  being 
assailed  by  the  tempter  in  an  unguarded  moment, 


MORALITY  63 

of  the  necessity  of  always  having  one's  armor  on. 
Neither  does  he  comprehend  the  relaxation  and 
relief  all  of  us  know  so  well  of  those  moments  dur- 
ing which  we  put  this  armor  off  for  the  nonce,  when 
we  are  sure  temptation  cannot  assail  us ;  nor  our 
occasional  excesses  when  we  find  ourselves  in  error 
as  to  this  security.  Discipline  in  this  direction  he 
does  not  practise.  He  substitutes  philosophy  for  it 
His  philosophy  may  now  and  then  be  stoic,  but  it  is 
not  ascetic.  He  does  not  strive  to  obey  his  higher 
and  control  his  lower  nature.  He  appears,  in  fact, 
to  have  no  higher  nature — and  no  lower  ;  to  have, 
morally  speaking,  a  nature  that  is  simple  and  single. 
The  restilt  is  twofold.  He  yields  to  temptation 
more  frequently  and  more  easily,  but  his  yielding  is 
of  far  less  consequence.  He  does  not  suffer  the 
abasement  involved  in  "  sinning  against  light,"  as 
the  phrase  is.  His  taking  temptation  so  lightly  asj' 
he  does  prevents  his  attaching  the  same  value  to  aK 
surrender  to  it  that  we  do  ;  his  fall  is  specific,  tempo- 
rary, and  trivial,  so  to  speak,  and  does  not  have  the 
general  lowering  effect  on  the  whole  nature  which 
succumbing  after  a  resistance  in  which  the  whole 
nature  has  been  intensely  interested  does  not  fail  to 
have.  It  does  not  leave  the  same  scar.  The  man  is 
morally  on  his  feet  again  much  sooner.  Often,  in- 
deed, he  has  not  fallen  at  all,  only  tripped.  Society 
in  consequence  takes  moral  errors  much  more  lightly 
than  it  does  with  us,  as  those  who  have  not  observed 
it  in  French  life  cannot  have  escaped  noticing  in 


X 


54  FRENCH  TRAITS 

French  literature.  That  favorite  incident  in  modem 
romance  round  which  the  story  of  "  Adam  Bede " 
centres,  for  example,  is  (minus  the  infanticide,  of 
course,  which  would  be  foreign  to  either)  in  French 
literature  and  French  hfe  almost  never  taken  grim- 
ly, but  gently,  not  tragically  but  simply,  not  as  a 
monstrous  but  as  a  natural  error  ;  in  fine,  it  is  still 
in  France  considered  as  remediable  as  it  was  in 
Galilee  "  twenty  ages  since."  Similarly  with  other 
yieldings  to  temptation.  The  main  consideration 
is  to  have  the  heart  right ;  until  that  is  corrupt 
nothing  occurs  which  can  be  called  irreparable  ; 
that  is  the  French  fiseling.  And  it  is  a  wonder- 
ful simplifier.  Moral  complexity  beyond  a  certain 
point,  the  point  at  which  the  influence  of  jarring  in- 
terests and  clashing  temptations  ceases,  is  accepted 
in  France  as  curiously  factitious.  The  air  is  too 
clear,  the  sky  too  bright.  George  EUot  could  never 
have  written  there. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  impartial  observer  would 
notice  that  yielding  to  temptation  is  apt  to  be 
pretty  strictly  proportioned  to  the  strength  rather 
of  the  temptation  than  of  the  tempted.  When  this 
presents  itself  in  attractive  form  there  is  often 
scarcely  a  pretence  of  resistance.  In  fact,  in  this 
matter  of  resistance,  the  French  strike  ns  as  having 
a  certain  curious  helplessness,  bom  doubtless  of  in- 
expeiience.  They  seem  like  the  militia  of  the  army 
of  morality,  not  its  regular  soldiers.  They  show 
the  lack  of  drill — at  least  in  skirmishes  and  recon- 


MORALITY  65 

noissances  if  not  in  pitched  battles  where  courage 
and  general  intelligence  are  more  serviceable.  As 
to  these  it  will,  of  coui'se,  be  understood  that  I  am 
here  speaking  mainly  of  peccadilloes  and  not 
crimes;  of  those  offences  which  their  own  society 
cordially  condemns,  Frenchmen  commit  as  few,  it 
need  not  be  said,  as  any  other  people.  But  I  should 
say,  for  example,  there  were  vastly  more  white  lies 
told  in  France  than  in  America.  There  is  a  whim- 
sical felicity  in  the  circumstance  that  the  scene  of 
Charles  Reade's  novel  of  that  name  is  laid  there. 
The  white  lie  is  tremendously  convenient,  and  is,  I 
think,  destined  to  greater  popularity  with  us  than 
it  at  present  enjoys.  In  France  its  abolition  would 
revolutionize  society.  Society  there  owes  to  it 
much  of  the  smoothness  with  which  its  machinery 
moves.  The  white  lie  of  causing  yourself  to  be  de- 
clared at  your  door  "not  at  home,"  it  does  not  re- 
quire a  seared  conscience  to  commit  even  among 
ourselves.  We  say  it  is  mere  civility,  it  prevents 
friction,  and  it  deceives  no  one.  It  is  in  the  same 
tone  of  whiteness  as  certain  customary  forms  of 
signing  letters.  The  same  principle  and  practice 
are  merely  carried  much  further  in  France.  They 
are  carried,  to  be  sure,  to  the  n-f-lth  power,  but 
their  identity  is  not  lost.  The  excess  is  chargeable 
to  the  approbativeness  characteristic  of  extreme 
social  development.  Candor  and  courtesy,  the  de- 
sire to  please  and  perfect  openness,  are  mutually 
inimical.     French  approbativeness  is  hostile  to  that 


66  FRENCH  TRAITS 

frankness  which  impels  the  truthful  Earl  of  Elle9> 
mere,  for  example,  to  notify  visitors  to  his  galleries 
by  an  announcement,  printed  at  the  head  of  his 
catalogue,  that,  notwithstanding  an  absurd  rumor  to 
the  contrary,  he  is  not  legally  obliged  to  have  them 
there  at  all — that  frankness,  in  fact,  which  makes  of 
the  average  Englishman  everywhere  so  concrete  a 
personality. 

The  result,  however,  is  a  noticeable  difference  in 
the  relations  between  people.  A  certain  scepticism 
takes  the  place  of  confidence.  A  person  is  believed 
in  trivial  statements  just  in  so  far  as  he  is  obviously 
disinterested  in  making  them.  The  gobe-mouche 
abounds ;  a  sense  of  the  prevailing  scepticism  and 
his  consequent  irresponsibility  develop  him  rapidly. 
No  subject  is  too  grave  to  secure  immunity  from 
him.  By  way  of  compensation  he  is  rewarded  with 
sympathetic  attention  or  artistic  interest  instead  of 
with  credence.  Much  the  same  views  and  gossip 
about  the  French  Republic  are  to  be  found  in  the 
"Figaro"  or  the  "Gaulois,"  and  in  the  English  and 
American  papers,  but  the  latter  only  impose  upon 
their  readers.  In  private  a  Frenchman  expects  his 
neighbor  to  be  courteous,  companionable,  sincere 
in  essentials,  frank  and  open  with  him,  but  he  does 
not  expect  him  to  tell  him  the  exact  truth  on  mat- 
ters of  no  moment  if  he  has  any  motive  for  conceal- 
ing it.  The  truth  to  him  is  not  a  fetich.  It  is  not 
only  not  to  be  spoken  at  all  times,  but  it  is  now  and 
then  to  be  perverted ;  the  great  thing  is  to  have 


MORALITY  57 

sufficient  tact  to  know  when,  and  sufficient  elasticity 
to  do  it  with  aplomb.  He  can  thus  venture  audaci- 
ties from  which  we  are  debarred,  and  enjoy  an  im- 
munity from  impertinence  to  which  we  are  strangers. 
His  quick  wit  spares  him  the  embarrassment  of 
blushing  on  many  occasions,  and  his  philosophy 
saves  him  from  the  discomfort  of  remorse.  You 
quite  envy  him,  at  times,  for  the  moment,  but  you 
are  sure  to  end  by  preferring  your  own  way.  I 
shall  always  recall  with  a  certain  ridiculous  pang  a 
small,  unobtrusive,  but  morally  brilliant  white  lie 
once  told  me  by  a  charming  Frenchwoman  with 
the  sole  motive  of  sparing  my  feelings.  But  to 
have  betrayed  how  much  more  acutely  they  were 
piqued  by  the  discovery  that  I  had  been  the  victim 
of  this  kind  of  considerateness  would  have  been  an 
immense  indiscretion. 

It  is  certainly  not  calumniating  the  French  to  af- 
firm that  they  have  no  genius  for  renouncement. 
Eenouncement  is  in  France,  for  the  most  part,  con- 
fined to  the  religious  orders.  It  is  opposed  to  the 
French  ideal  of  expansion.  He  that  taketh  a  city  is 
decidedly  more  esteemed  than  he  that  ruleth  his 
spirit — unless  the  ruling  be  to  the  end  of  city-taking 
or  some  such  specific  accomplishment.  His  success 
or  failure  in  hfe  when  "  divine,  everlasting  Night,  with 
her  star-diadems,  with  her  silence  and  her  veraci- 
ties "  is  come,  is  measured  rather  by  the  career  he  has 
nm  than  by  the  chai-acter  he  has  carved  for  himself, 
To  be  worthy  instead  of  to  have  been  fortunate,  in- 


68  FRENCH  TRAITS 

stead  of  to  have  hit  some  definite  mark  or  other,  ia 
to  him  an  ambition  of  vague  significance  ;  it  is  not  an 
aim  of  the  social  instinct.  "Worthy  of  what ?  "  one's 
French  friend  always  rejoins;  "of  eternal  life,  no 
doubt :  c'est  subtil."  Scott's  dying  injunction  to 
Lockhart  could  hardly  be  translated  into  his  tongue, 
without  the  risk  of  appearing  insipid.  "  Est^ce  que 
tous  les  honnetes  gens  ne  sont  pas  good  alors  ?  " 
Certain  individualities,  with  us  comparatively  fre- 
quent, whose  main  object  in  life  seems  to  be  to  ef- 
face themselves  most  completely  in  order  to  be  of 
service  to  others,  with  whom  the  proffer  of  those  an- 
cillary attentions  so  exasperating  to  their  victims  is 
relentlessly  systematic,  in  whose  eyes  one  can  per- 
ceive the  gleam  of  triumph  when  a  coarse  nature  ia 
imposing  upon  their  goodness — like  the  legendary 
martyr's  smile  of  beatification  as  the  flames  mount 
higher — this  kind  of  person  is  unknown  in  the  three 
parts  of  all  Gaul.  The  nearest  French  analogue  is 
a  bonasse  person,  a  person  weakly  amiable  by  dispo- 
sition, not  by  system,  a  person  of  a  radically  differ- 
ent moral  fibre  and  far  more  infrequent.  Self-sacri- 
fice to  the  general  end  of  spiritual  perfection,  which 
however  little  it  may  be  practised  among  -as  is  nev- 
ertheless a  principle  in  which  we  profoundly  believe, 
and  which  affects  profoundly  our  judgment  of  our- 
selves and  others,  is  not  at  all  so  esteemed  by  the 
French.  They  have  no  instinctive  confidence  in 
its  salutariness.  They  believe  it,  on  the  contrary, 
misleading,  narrowing,  retarding — a  sort  of  burial 


MORALITY  59 

of  one's  talent  in  a  napkin — unless  it  be  strictly 
presided  over  and  efficiently  directed  by  the  intel- 
ligence, by  tact,  by  the  sense  of  measure,  of  relative 
importance. 

And  not  only  does  their  estimation  of  the  disci- 
pline of  character  difi'er  from  ours,  but  we  have  dif- 
ferent conceptions  of  character  itself,  of  what  con-^ 
stitutes  character.  We  mean  by  character,  integrity ; 
we  mean  what  the  New  York  "  Sun  "  means  when  it 
aflSrms  that  character  and  brains  are  necessary  to  a 
newspaper's  success.  In  France  temperament,  dis- 
position, is  what  is  meant.  When  we  say  of  such 
and  such  a  man  that  he  has  a  great  deal  of  charac- 
ter, we  generally  mean  that  he  has  disciplined  his  '  ' 
temperament,  his  disposition,  into  strict  obedience  to 
the  behests  of  duty  ;  that  he  has  clear  and  peremp- 
tory ideas  about  right  and  wrong ;  in  short,  we  think 
of  his  honesty  rather  than  of  his  energy.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  his  energy,  his  will,  his  volonte,  that 
is  meant  when  the  Frenchman  attributes  du  carac-  / 
tire  to  a  person.  Napoleon,  for  example,  was  a  man  V' 
of  prodigious  character  in  the  French  view,  and 
making  "his  way  to  empire  over  broken  oaths  and 
through  a  sea  of  blood  "  only  the  more  clearly  illus- 
trates it.  In  fact  the  French  and  ourselves  see  each 
his  own  side  in  the  same  man.  Michelet,  for  ex- 
ample, speaks  of  Turgot's  ferocite  :  IMr,  Matthew 
Arnold,  having  to  compare  Turgot  to  Bi^tler  in  just 
this  respect,  says  he  should  rather  call  the  qual- 
ity "  sceva  indignatio."    Nothing  could  better  indi- 


60  FRENCH  TRAITS 

cate  the  two  points  of  view — the  scientific  and 
impei-sonal,  and  the  moral  and  sympathetic.  The 
'SVench  attitude  is  critical,  descriptive.  M.  Scherer 
calls  M.  Halevy  cruel.  M.  Taine  applies  the  same 
epithet  to  Thackeray.  In  each  instance  the  word  is 
used,  wholly  without  reference  to  its  moral  signifi- 
cance, to  characterize  the  fidelity  with  which  base- 
ness is  portrayed.  Bon,  mechant,  d'un  mauvais  ca- 
ractere — a  dozen  epithets  are  used  in  this  sense, 
more  aa  we  would  apply  them  to  children  or  the 
domestic  animals  than  to  persons  supposably  re- 
sponsible themselves  for  their  characters.  Balzac's 
conception  of  Christianity,  which  he  advocates  with 
9ialf  ardor,  is  of  a  social  police  system.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  not  only  bring  everything  moral  at  once 
into  the  ethical  sphere,  uut  we  are  apt  to  bring  ethics 
themselves  immediately  into  the  sphere  of  religion, 
of  emotion,  of  poetry — that  is  to  say,  our  considera- 
tion of  them  is  practically  as  far  as  possible  re- 
moved from  the  scientific. 

Wliere  a  people  has  thus  the  virtues  not  of  disci- 
pline but  of  disposition,  it  at  least  partially  atones 
for  some  of  its  shortcomings  by  avoiding  the  defect* 
apparently  inseparable  from  that  personal  moral- 
ity which  sets  so  much  store  by  character  as  we 
conceive  it — the  defect  of  cant,  of  hypocrisy.  The 
French  disesteem  for  cant  is  as  great  as  is  ours  for 
falsehood.  Courage,  candor,  lack  of  vanity,  egotism, 
contemptuousness,  are  all  characteristics  favorable 
to  truthfulness,   but  they  are  the  natural  prey  of 


MORALITY  61 

hypocrisy.  The  constant  danger  of  attaching  ex. 
traordinary  value  to  character,  to  conscientiousness, 
is  the  danger  of  misconceiving  one's  own.  Innate 
optimism  and  self-respect  contribute  powerfully  to 
prevent  us  from  actual  realization  in  many  instances 
and  on  many  occasions.  Only  rarely,  for  example, 
does  such  a  journal  as  the  conservative  London 
"  Morning  Post "  avow  that  "there  is  more  licentious 
effrontery  in  a  single  London  thoroughfare  than  in 
the  whole  of  Paris."  What  you  are  most  anxious 
not  to  do  you  are  extremely  slow  to  admit,  even  to 
yourself,  that  you  have  actually  done.  French  cafar- 
dise  is  quite  a  different  trait  from  cant.  It  is  hyp- 
ocrisy of  a  gross,  colossal  order  that  never  takes  in 
any  one,  least  of  all  that  inevitable  victim  of  cant, 
the  hypocrite  himself.  The  tribe  of  Tartuffe  is  al- 
most professional  in  its  cafardise,  which  is,  like  the 
false  humility  of  the  Hebrew  of  literature,  a  special, 
a  cultivated,  not  an  integral  and  general  quality. 
The  French  frankness  in  intimacy  about  falsehood 
of  the  "  harmless  "  sort  seems  to  us  cynical  only  be- 
cause we  forget  they  have  no  cant.  They  are  aston- 
ishingly sincere,  amazingly  unpretending,  in  point  of 
character.  The  Orleanist's  jeer  at  the  Bonapartes, 
conveyed  in  the  boast  that  of  the  family  he  served 
"  all  the  men  were  brave  and  all  the  women  virtu- 
ous," was  taken  as  a  mot  rather  than  as  an  affront — 
a  mot  plein  d'esprit,  et  plein  de  malice,  nothing  to 
make  any  one's  blood  boil  except  that  of  Plon-Plon, 
which  was  abnormally  cool.     How  many  of  us  are 


62  FRENCH  TRAITS 

in  the  habit  of  protesting,  as  the  French  continually 
do,  that  we  are  no  better  nor  worse  than  our  fellows  ? 
Are  not  the  worst  of  us  apt  to  cherish  a  faint  hope 
that  we  are  a  trifle  better  than  the  average,  not  to 
say  the  majority — have  a  little  finer  feeling,  a  little 
more  scrupulousness,  or  if  not  that,  at  any  rate  a 
little  less  Pharisaism  ?  And  these  psychological  con- 
volutions, his  frankness  with  himself  and  with  others, 
spares  the  Frenchman.  In  crises  which  really  touch 
him  he  shows  a  great  deal  of  self-abnegation  ;  gene- 
rosity, charity,  are  French  virtues.  If  he  does  not 
willingly  "  lose  "  his  Hfe,  if,  on  the  other  hand,  his 
ideal  is  to  sell  it  as  dearly  as  possible,  he  at  least 
sells  it.  And  he  sells  it  without  any  pretence,  with- 
out any  braggart  sentimentality  and  self-deception, 
but  with  an  intellectual  and  often  even  an  artistic 
consciousness  of  what  he  is  doing  that  is  almost  as 
refreshing  to  the  moral  sense  as  it  is  to  the  intelli- 
gence. The  soul  may  remain  unsatisfied  ;  but  his 
social,  business,  and  public  virtues  may  well,  in  his 
esteem,  be  set  over  against  our  private  onea 

Lack  of  personal  discipline,  however,  means  yield- 
ing to  one's  instincts,  whether  one  mean  by  this 
being  in  harmony  with  nature  or  really  running 
counter  to  her  steadfast  undertakings.  The  first 
and  finest  of  our  instincts,  setting  aside  the  super- 
natural, is  undoubtedly  love,  and  it  is  in  his  aban- 
donment to  this  instinct  that  the  Frenchman  is  usu- 
ally believed  by  us  to  be  less  successful  in  morality 
than  elsewhere.     Certainly  more  distinctly  and  uni* 


MORALITY  63 

versally  than  anywhere  else  is  it  felt  in  France  that 
love  vincit  omnia — that  it  is,  as  Thackeray  affirms, 
"immeasurably  above  ambition,  more  precious  than 
wealth,  more  noble  than  name,"  and  that  "he  knows 
not  life  who  knows  not  that."  I  say  this  feeling  is 
more  distinct  and  xmiversal  in  France  than  among 
us,  because  there  love  not  only  conquers  all  things 
but  one  may  almost  say  excuses  everything.  It  is 
the  passion  of  youth  and  eld,  men  and  women.  The 
young  girl  looks  forward  to  an  experience  of  its  di- 
vine grace  with  an  emotion  excited  in  the  breast 
of  her  American  sister  only  by  the  supernatural. 
Of  all  the  activities  of  his  prime  the  old  man  re- 
grets most  the  abandonment,  the  enthusiasm,  the 
absence  of  calculation,  the  spiritual  exaltation  of  the 
least  egoistic  of  human  impulses.  Never  to  have 
made  the  voyage  to  Cythera  is  to  have  lived  in  vain. 
"  Love  i^a  thmgtoo  young^  to  kjiow  what  conscience 
is,"  says  Shakespeare,  and  the  sacrifices  made  to 
avoid  thus  missing  the  end  of  one's  emotional  ex- 
istence are  often  very  great ;  sometimes  they  are 
grotesque  ;  now  and  then  they  are  tragic  to  the  last 
degree,  and  the  misery  and  demoralization  resulting 
from  mistaking  the  factitious  for  the  genuine  in  this 
momentous  matter,  colder  temperaments  may  well 
congratulate  themselves  upon  avoiding.  But  these 
mistakes  are  often  the  defects  of  a  generous  ideality, 
and  we  are  prone  to  exaggerate  their  number  and 
gravity  ;  the  nature  that  passes  its  life  in  resisting 
temptation  is  indisposed  to  iudi?e  fai^-lv  those  who 


64  FRENCH   TRAITS 

evade  the  struggle.  We  keep  forgetting  that  oui 
manners  are  diflferent  from  French  manners,  and  our 
natures  constitutionally  unlike.  The  French  ideal 
is  not  that  of  St.  Francis,  of  Thoreau.  Mr.  Arnold 
cites  Paley  to  show  how  especially  and  organically 
corrupting  is  any  swerving  from  Hippolytan  pu- 
dicity.  Undoubtedly  for  all  dispositions  to  whom 
Paley  is  a  sympathetic  moralist  But  the  whole 
problem  is  different  in  the  country  of  Stendhal,  who 
finds  in  Paley  the  last  refuge  of  moral  and  intellect- 
ual mediocrity.  Sainte-Beuve,  of  whom  Mr.  Arnold 
never  spoke  without  something  akin  to  reverence, 
for  example,  says  quite  frankly  of  himself,  when  his 
integrity  was  attacked — like  Hamilton's — :  "  J'ai  mea 
faiblesses.  J'ai  pu  regretter  sentir  quelquefois  que 
j'y  eteignais  ma  flamme,  mais  jamais  je  n'y  ai  perverti 
mon  coeur."  A  society  which  substitutes  personal, 
or  at  most  domestic,  for  social  virtues,  where  women 
are  free  from  pursuit  because  men  are  indifferent, 
whose  manners  permit  flirtation  and  prohibit  gal- 
lantry, whose  only  demi-monde  is  a  dissipated  and 
defiant  bachelordom,  runs  far  more  risk  of  perver- 
sion if  it  allows  itself  any  relaxation  in  this  regard 
than  a  society  like  that  of  France,  whose  quaUties 
tend  to  humanize  everything  short  of  vice  itself. 
What  would  be  vice  among  us  remains  in  France 
social  irregularity  induced  by  sentiment.  The  dis- 
tinction is,  I  think,  the  most  important  of  all  that 
can  be  observed  in  any  judgment  of  France  by 
Americans.     The  irregularity  may  be  very  great  and 


MORALITY  65 

the  sentiment  very  dilute,  but  between  these  and 
such  vice  as  social  irregularity  of  the  kind  generally 
means  with  us  the  distance  is  very  great  and  the 
distinction  very  radical.  To  avoid  misjudgraents  in 
this  matter,  to  avoid  talking  of  the  French  being 
"  given  over  to  the  worship  of  their  Goddess  Lubri- 
city," for  instance,  it  is  necessai^  constantly  to 
remind  one's  self  of  this.  When  Madame  de  Chev- 
reuse  complains  of  Anne  of  Austria's  austerity,  and 
says  she  had  all  the  trouble  in  the  world  to  awaken 
in  her  some  taste  for  the  glory  of  being  loved,  when 
La  Rochefoucauld  afl&rms  that  "  there  are  few 
honest  women  who  are  not  sick  of  their  trade," 
when  M.  Sarcey  exclaims  that  the  rejection  of  a 
suitor  because  he  has  had  a  mistress  is  a  solecism, 
when  Mr.  Heniy  James  recounts  the  tavern  raillery 
of  a  Languedoc  dinner-table,  speculating  in  the 
presence  of  the  blushing  and  good-natured  servant 
herself  as  to  whether  or  no  she  is  sage,  when,  in 
short,  either  in  French  books  or  French  life  one 
encounters  suggestion  of  the  sensual  triumph  over 
correctness,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  error 
has  almost  always  an  element  of  ideality.  As  to 
actual  and  recognized  vice,  international  compari- 
sons are  very  sterile  as  well  as  very  odious. 

Institutions  have  nowhere  more  influence  than  in 
France,  and,  given  the  French  belief  in  the  divine 
instinct  of  love,  the  lengths  to  which  it  may  lead 
are  easily  seen  to  depend  much  upon  marriage  and 
divorce  laws.  We  at  all  events  find  no  difficulty, 
5 


66  FRENCH   TRAITS 

in  self-reproachful  moments,  in  admitting  the  im- 
portant influence  of  divorce  upon  national  morals. 
Marriage  being  what  it  is,  monogamy  being  so 
eminent  a  witness  of  the  race's  development  and 
such  an  integral  part  of  its  highest  attainment,  the 
compromise  in  this  respect  of  any  society's  ideal  is 
easily  seen  to  be  inexpressibly  vulgarizing.  Easy 
divorce,  at  any  rate,  is  express  and  legalized  aban- 
donment of  one  of  the  most  precious  conquests  we 
have  won  from  original  anarchy.  But  I  think  our 
recognition  of  this,  emphasized  a  posteriori  as  with 
us  such  recognition  is,  prevents  us  from  conceiving 
readily  the  enormous  effect  which  the  complete 
absence  of  divorce  has  upon  a  Catholic  society.  A 
Catholic  society  is,  as  I  have  already  said,  far  less  self- 
concentrated,  far  more  expansive  and  natural  than  a 
Protestant,  and  yet  in  regard  to  one  of  the  most  arti- 
ficial of  institutions — which  in  the  sense  of  later 
development  monogamy  certainly  is — it  permits  no 
elasticity  whatever.  Be  the  tension  never  so  great  it  is 
never  formally  recognized.  The  result  is  inevitably 
that  informally  its  rupture  is  too  readily  excused.  It 
is,  to  be  sure,  possible  to  say  to  a  Frenchman,  who 
objects  that  he  only  does  illegally  what,  were  he  an 
American,  he  would  have  abundant  warrant  of  law 
for,  and  what  neither  the  church  nor  the  world  would 
reprove  in  him,  that  offences  against  pure  legality, 
unjustified  by  the  compulsion  of  a  higher  law,  are 
sin  ;  that  if  he  does  not  instinctively  feel  this,  reflec- 
tion will  prove  it  to  him,  and  that  his  woi-tbiness* 


MORALITY  67 

not  bis  happiness,  is  the  important  matter  for  him 
and  his  people.  You  may  even  add  commiseration 
at  his  misfortune  in  not  being  an  American,  so  that 
ho  might  be  happy  and  worthy  at  the  same  time. 
He  will  be  certain  to  esteem  you  a  pedant.  And, 
in  fact,  between  easy  divorce  and  no  divorce  there 
is  not,  morally  speaking,  anything  like  the  abyss 
that  closet  philosophy  is  apt  to  imagine.  In  the 
efifect  upon  society  at  large  there  is  far  more  differ- 
ence between  strict  divorce  and  either.  The  con- 
version of  the  Jews,  according  to  Launcelot  Gobbo, 
merely  increased  the  number  of  pork-eaters,  and, 
speaking  practically  and  prosaically,  the  effect  of 
exchanging  easy  divorce  for  no  divorce  at  all,  would 
be  mainly,  I  imagine,  to  increase  the  number  of 
natural  children  ;  whereas  it  is  highly  probable 
that  the  recent  re-enactment  of  divorce  in  France 
will  ere  long  be  found  to  have  produced  a  salutary 
disturbance  in  the  vital  statistics  of  the  country. 
If  this  and  certain  corollaries  of  the  proposition 
which  will  occur  to  every  one  more  readily  than 
they  can  be  expressed  be  true,  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand how  marriage — erected  by  the  church  into  a 
sacrament,  and  yet  frequently  found  to  be  actually 
intolerable — has  hitherto,  in  France,  found  less 
virtual  and  sincere  acquiescence  in  its  sacred  chai-- 
acter  than  elsewhere.  Formal  respect  for  it  abounds. 
Nothing  is  more  shocking  to  a  Frenchman  than  the 
records  of  our  divorce  cases.  And  yet  it  is  as  a 
convention   simply  that   indissoluble  mari-iage  im- 


68  FRENCH  TRAITS 

poses  itself  on  his  respect,  because  its  sanction  is 
external,  ecclesiastical,  and  legal,  and  not  spiritual 
and  natural  \  He  has  accordingly  the  less  care  for 
the  fidehty  which  elsewhere  is  inextricably  associ- 
ated with  it  in  theory.  It  would  hardly  be  an 
exaggeration  to  say  that  for  this  fidehty  he  cares, 
absolutely  speaking,  nothing  at  all.  He  excuses 
himself,  or  rather  he  explains  his  position,  by  a 
reference  to  nature.  The  great  thing  is  to  be 
in  harmony  with  nature,  he  thinks.  In  all  these 
matters  he  takes  very  little  account  of  what  Goethe 
calls  culture-conquests  except  as  social  institutions, 
decorous  conventions.  Fickleness  in  women  he 
admits  as  a  defect,  venial  or  not  as  the  heart  hap- 
pens to  be  interested,  but  as  much  less  natural 
than  the  same  trait  in  man  as  polyandry  is  less 
usual  than  polygamy.  As  to  man,  the  universal 
French  feeling  is  very  well  expressed  by  Mr.  How- 
ells  in  an  obiter  dictum  of  his  "Indian  Summer." 
In  Mr.  Howells'  public  it  is  always  pUice  aux  dames. 
He  has  so  completely  won  the  affection  of  his  women 
readers  by  betraying  women's  secrets  that  he  is 
now  and  then  emboldened  to  brave  their  indigna- 
tion by  divulging  a  secret  of  the  opposite  sex,  as 
he  does  in  this  paragraph  wherein  he  represents  his 
hero,  who  is  in  love  with  two  women  at  the  same 
time,  as  "struggling  stupidly  with  a  .confusion  of 
desires  which  every  man  but  no  woman  will  under- 
stand." "After  eighteen  hundred  years,"  he  says, 
"the  man  is  still  imperfectly  monogamoua"    That 


MORALITY  69 

strikes  us  all,  male  and  female  alike,  as  the  quintes- 
sence of  humor.  It  is  not  precisely  of  the  same  char- 
acter as  that  of  Tom  Jones,  a  laugh  from  whom,  says 
Lamb,  "clears  the  air,"  but  it  performs  a  similar  ser- 
vice. Mr.  Howells  is  the  enfant  terrible  of  realistic  fic- 
tion, and  we  can  no  longer  go  on  pretending  that  even 
American  men  are  strangers  to  polygamous  instincts. 
But  as  an  American  humorist  once  remarked  of  his 
church-going  propensities,  they  "  can  restrain  them- 
selves." And  doubtless  until  we  have  our  Flaubert 
or  our  Fielding,  as  well  as  our  Howells,  we  shall  be- 
lieve that  they  do,  just  as  even  after  that  distant 
event  we  shall  continue  to  believe  that  they  should. 
But  the  Frenchman  replies  that  all  this  is  based  on 
a  Puritan  systematization  of  St.  Paul's  separation  of 
the  law  of  the  members  and  the  law  of  the  mind, 
and  that  it  is  fantastic.  Only  in  an  atmosphere  as 
colorless  and  passionless  as  that  in  which  the  char- 
acters of  "Indian  Summer,"  for  example,  move,  he 
maintains,  is  it  possible  to  carry  the  question  of 
rectitude  into  the  region  over  which  the  heart  pre- 
sides alone.  To  violate  the  heart's  dictates,  which  / 
are  the  direct  behests  of  nature,  is,  in  his  eyes,  either 
pedantry  or  folly  ;  at  all  events,  an  esoteric  concern 
of  monks  and  nuns.  It  is  not  a  question  at  all  of  a 
higher  law  and  the  law  of  the  members,  but  of  the 
natural  instincts  of  man,  which  on  the  one  hand  he  is 
to  preserve  from  that  depravity  universally  stigma- 
tized as  unnatural,  and  on  the  other  to  organize  in 
such  a  way  as  to  benefit  that  highly  artificial  insti- 


70  FRENCH   TRAITS 

tution  known  as  society  in  the  direction  of  natural 
development  and  not  natural  restraint. 
'^  Hence,  plainly,  the  French  idea  of  marriage  as  an 
institution  mainly  social.  It  becomes  a  convention 
like  another.  If  it  be  combined  with  a  love  whose 
character  guarantees  its  permanence — a  flame  which 
does  not,  unlike  Campbell's, 

"        .        .         .     need  renewal 
Of  fresh  beauty  for  its  fuel " 

— 80  much  the  better.  But  love  is  one  thing  and 
!^/marriage  another.  This  being  distinctly  understood 
it  will  at  once  be  perceived  that  the  stronger  a 
people's  instincts  for  social  order  the  more  disposi- 
tion there  is  to  make  marriage  indissoluble.  If 
.  marriage  is  understood  by  an  entire  society  not  to 
'-'  be  a  contrivance  to  "bind  love  to  last  forever,"  the 
principal  objection  to  binding  marriage  to  last  for- 
ever disappears.  Every  instinct  of  form,  of  propri- 
ety, of  regularity,  every  instinct  which  shrinks  from 
social  disturbance  counsels  the  permanence  of  marri- 
age, which  thus  becomes  purely  an  aflFair  of  reason. 
Family  relations,  property  interests,  children's  fut- 
ure, the  organic  solidarity  of  communities  are  in 
this  way  distinctly  served.  It  is  personal  morality 
which  suffers,  because  society  is  immediately  ad- 
justed to  the  notion  that  marriage  is  a  convention 
merely,  and  that  offences  against  marriage  appeal  to 
the  tribunals  of  manners  rather  than  of  morals. 
And  not  only  does  morality  suffer,  but  marriage  un- 


MORALITY  71 

questionably  tends  to  become  materialized.  The 
two  things  interact  with  mutual  intensity — marriage 
is  made  material  by  being  indissoluble,  and  it  is  the 
material  conception  of  marriage  as  a  social  conven- 
tion which  renders  its  indissolubility  attractive. 
Thus  we  have  both  the  effect  of  no  divorce  and  the 
explanation  of  it. 

I  think,  therefore,  the  recent  re-enactment  of  di- 
vorce by  the  French  democracy,  hedged  about  as  it  is 
with  precaution  against  abuse,  cannot  fail  to  have  a 
salutary  effect  on  the  personal  morality  of  the  com- 
munity, and  that  it  will  also  tend  to  spiritualize  the 
community's  conception  of  marriage.  There  will  be 
more  marriages,  and  they  will  be  less  an  affair  of 
reason  and  more  an  affair  of  the  heart.  This  will 
be  the  effect,  because  in  taking  an  irreparable  step, 
however  an  Anglo-Saxon  may  prefer  the  guidance 
of  his  instincts  and  affections,  the  Frenchman  pre- 
fers to  be  directed  by  his  intelligence.  And  though 
no  one  probably  thinks  of  divorce  potentialities  on 
his  wedding-day,  the  permanence  or  dissolubility  of 
the  contract  undoubtedly  makes  a  great  difference 
iu  the  bachelor's  chronic  and  constitutional  attitude 
toward  marriage.  One  has  only  to  regard  the  two 
extremes  presented  by  some  of  our  communities  and 
a  Catholic  one  in  this  respect.  In  Southern  Europe 
man  is  notoriously  reluctant  to  "  surrender  his  lib- 
erty ; "  in  some  of  our  communities  he  can  hardly 
wait  to  become  of  age  before  he  crystallizes  some 
passing  fancy  into  matrimony. 


7^  FRENCH   TRAITS 

On  the  whole,  marriage,  divorce,  and  cognate 
questions  aside,  to  find  the  French  lacking  in  moral 
sense  is,  I  think,  to  betray  confusion.  The  French 
themselves,  accustomed  as  they  are  to  such  a  verdict 
at  our  hands,  always  ascribe  it  either  to  prejudice  of 
a  particularly  unintelligent  kind  or  else  to  hj-pocrisy. 
"The  English,"  says  a  recent  reviewer  of  George 
Ehot's  life  in  the  " Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,"  "are  no 
better  than  other  people,  but  they  have  a  singular 
desire  to  appear  so."  The  French,  generally,  would 
accept  this  as  a  temperate  expression  of  their  feel- 
ing that  any  arrogation  of  superior  moraUty  on  the 
part  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  unjustified.  We  under- 
stand morality  in  many  different  ways.  Some  of 
our  most  conspicuously  moral  people  beUeve  indeed 
that  it  is  a  rational  substitute  for  religion.  A  less 
frigid  school  finds  it  impossible  to  conceive  of  true 
morality  except  as  a  religious  result  Except  that 
the  former  of  these  profess  the  utilitarian  ideal  and 
permit  themselves  little  emotion,  save  of  a  severely 
ethical  kind,  whereas  the  Frenchman  has  his  suscep- 
tibility in  constant  exercise  though  under  perfect 
control — except,  in  other  words,  that  sceptical  Puri- 
tanism is  sui  generis,  and  can  ill  be  said  to  have 
relations  to  anything  Latin — the  French  view  of 
morality,  the  Latin  view,  may  be  said  to  stand  mid- 
way between  these  two.  French  morality  is  moral- 
ity in  the  etymological  sense.  But  because  the 
standard  is  exterior  rather  than  of  conscience,  be- 
cause, as  I  have  already  said,  the  idea  of  honor  to  a 


MORALITY  73 

very  considerable  degree  takes  the  place  of  the  idea 
of  duty  among  Frenchmen,  because  what  is  there* 
fore  venial  with  them  is  sometimes  grave  with  us 
and  vice  uensc?,  it  by  no  means  follows  that  the  French 
notion  of  what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong  is  any  the 
less  strict,  precise,  and  universally  binding  than  our 
own.  And  so  far  as  the  accord  between  theory  and 
practice  is  concerned  I  suppose  it  is  needless  to 
point  out  the  perfection  which  has  been  attained  in 
France  in  the  sphere  of  morals  as  well  as  every- 
where else.  In  the  sense  in  which  it  has  been  aptly 
observed  that  "  Coleridge  had  no  morals,"  French 
morality  is  a  conspicuous  national  characteristic. 

No,  French  morality  is  simply  misconceived  wheii 
it  is  summarily  depreciated  as  it  is  our  vice  to  de- 
preciate it.  It  is  as  systematic  as  our  own,  and  by 
those  most  interested  believed  to  be  as  successful ; 
it  is  in  France  that  life  is  longest  and  happiness 
greatest,  and  well-being  most  widely  diffused.  The 
great  distinction  between  us,  the  chief  characteristic 
which  in  this  sphere  sets  off  the  Frenchman  fi'om 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  and  from  the  Spaniard  also,  and  the 
Italian,  over  whom  he  triumphs  morally,  perhaps,  is 
his  irreligiousness.  I  refer  of  course  to  the  mass  of 
the  nation,  not  to  the  few  who  are  absorbed  by 
devotion,  which  is  religion  intensified.  To-day,  at 
all  events,  the  great  body  of  the  French  people  is 
Voltairian.  A  better  epithet  could  not  be  found  for 
irreligious  morality.  "  To  Voltaire,"  says  IVIr.  John 
Morley,    very   felicitously,    "  reason  and    humanit;? 


74  FRENCH   TRAITS 

were  but  a  single  word,  and  love  of  truth  and  passion 
for  justice  but  one  emotion."  Yet  as  Emerson  ob- 
serves :  "  He  said  of  the  good  Jesus  even,  '  I  pray 
you  never  let  me  hear  that  man's  name  again  '  " — 
formidable  utterance,  however  interpreted  or  ex- 
plained, for  disclosing  a  lack  of  the  religious  sense. 
Nevertheless  he  has  read  to  little  piupose  the 
greatest  humanist  of  the  century  of  Kant,  of  Hume, 
and  of  Kousseau,  who  does  not  perceive  the  positive 
force  of  Voltaire  as  a  moralist.  The  undercurrent, 
or  rather  the  substance  of  all  that  infinite  wit  which 
nearly  every  English  critic  of  Voltaire  warns  us  to  be 
on  our  guard  against,  is  moral  earnestness,  and  that 
he  should  have  been  mistaken  for  a  literary  artist 
would  have  exasperated  him  as  much  as  a  similar 
popular  error  grieved  the  prophet  Ezekiel.  His 
word  to  his  fellow-men  is  this  :  "  Do  not  make  the 
mistake  of  thinking  life  is  all  of  a  piece  or  men 
either.  The  world  is  larger  than  your  philosophy. 
God  is  inscrutable  but  infinitely  kind  and  good.  Sin 
is  either  stupidity  or  else  a  metaphysical  invention. 
Truth  is  better  than  the  fairest -seeming  falsehood, 
and  the  fanaticism  which  lurks  in  propagandism  of 
all  sorts  is  fatal  to  it.  Absolute  happiness  is  an 
abstraction.  The  exaltation  which  pretends  to  its 
possession  is  either  empty  or  hypocritical.  Be  con- 
tent not  to  be  happy,  or  at  least  be  happy  in  miss- 
ing bliss.  Be  cheerful,  be  clairvoyant,  be  kind  and 
good  ;  avoid  pedantry  even  in  renouncement,  be 
simple,  and    above    all    things  remember    il  faut 


MORALITY  7n 

cultiver  notre  jardin."  The  lack  of  such  philosophy 
is  plainly  spirituality  ;  its  virtue  is  clearly  good  sense. 
It  is  not  the  predominance  of  the  mind  over  the 
heart  that  it  teaches,  but  of  both  over  the  soul.  Of 
the  two  commandments  whereon  "  hang  all  the  law 
and  the  prophets,"  it  forgets  the  first  in  its  devotion 
to  the  second.  The  two  are  indeed  "  like  unto  " 
each  other,  and  have  inextricable  mutual  relations. 
But  as  the  second  is,  except  abstractly,  not  so  inev- 
itable a  corollary  of  the  first  as  to  render  its  state- 
ment needless,  so  it  is  plain  that  one's  duty  toward 
one's  neighbor  may  in  practice  be  very  sufficiently 
performed  under  the  sanctions  of  a  social  morality 
which  is  nevertheless  unillumined  by  that  personal 
spiritual  experience  and  uncrowned  by  that  "  inward 
glory  "  particular  to  the  performance  of  one's  duty 
toward  God — particular,  that  is  to  say,  to  religion. 
It  is  the  personal  insufficiency  of  his  philosophy  / 
that  is  responsible  for  those  weaknesses  which  make 
M.  Scherer  call  Voltaire  "  a  pitiful  character."  Vol- 
taire, at  all  events,  could  not  dispense  with  religion. 
In  fine,  the  French  have  not  the  religious  tem-j 
perament,  as  they  have  not  the  analogous  poetical 
or  sentimental  temperament.  The  moment  one  re-' 
moves  from  religion  the  theological  element  one  per- 
ceives how  differently  differently-constituted  souls 
may  be  affected  by  it ;  how,  instead  of  varying,  like 
morality,  with  energy  of  character,  it  varies  with 
temperament ;  how  some  natures  are  perpetually 
feeling  after  and  finding  its  supreme  consolations, 


76  FRENCH   TRAITS 

I  and  how  others  are  infinitely  less  satisfied  by  these. 
In  general,  I  think  the  French  temperament  fails  to 
vibrate  responsively  to  them.  There  is  something 
Soci'atic  and  self-sustaining  about  it  which  demands 
the  adjustment  of  life  to  health  and  activity,  and  re- 
sents the  prominence  of  solace  and  healing  in  an 
ideal  that  contemplates  the  drawing  nigh  of  evil 
days.  As  Carlyle  said  of  Socrates,  indeed,  the 
!Prench  temperament  is  "terribly  at  ease  in  Zion." 

'Its  ideal  is  the  Epicurean  ideal.  Aristotle  is  its 
moralist,  not  St.  Paul — Ai-istotle  asserting,  as  ex- 
posited  by  Condorcet,  that  "  every  virtue  is  one  of 
our  natural  inclinations  which  reason  forbids  us 
both  to  resist  too  much  and  to  obey  too  implicitly." 
All  Condorcet's  ethics,  which  are  French  ethics, 
even  his  sympathetic  account  of  Epicureanism, 
which  he  finds  least  distant  from  the  truth,  are 
vitiated  for  us  by  our  profound  conviction  that  the 
maxim.  "  he  that  loveth  his  life  shall  lose  it,"  is  as 
empirically  sound  as  it  is  mysterious.  But  that  is 
religion,  and  Condorcet  and  his  countrymen  con- 
centrate their  attention  in  this  sphere  on  morahty. 
Instead  of  conquering  the  passions  they  utilize 
them.     In.stead  of  resignation  they  seek  distraction  ; 

I  and  they  have  so  ordered  life  that  such  distraction 
as  with  our  self-centred  individualism  we  do  not 
dream  of,  is  within  their  easy  reach. 

The  gayety  we  too  often  associate  with  levity  of 
character  is,  as  the  French  illustrate  it,  a  necessity 
of  mental  health  and  a  kind  of  goodness.     By  no 


MORALITY  77 

means  is  it  a  mere  yielding  to  sensation,  which  is 
the  beginning  of  dissipation  ;  but  there  is  about  it 
something  of  tension.  To  be  gay  a  man  must  live  \ 
well,  must  order  his  life  aright.  In  many  cases 
there  is  a  real  dissipation  in  not  seeking  the  means 
of  gayety,  in  letting  the  whole  physical  system  lose 
tone  for  lack  of  the  tension  which  gayety  imparts. 
The  leading  motive  of  Pere  La  Chaise  has  a  distinct 
note  of  gayety  in  it.  "  Man  is  a  sporting  as  well  as 
a  praying  animal,"  says  Dr.  Holmes.  And,  gi'owing 
old,  M.  Renan  regrets  that  in  his  youth  he  did  not 
play  enough ;  which,  to  be  sure,  the  "  St.  James's 
Gazette  "  takes  to  mean  regret  for  "  the  serious  occu- 
pations of  the  cafe,  the  fencing-school,  the  naviga- 
tion of  the  silvery  Seine  on  Sunday  beneath  beauty's 
favoring  smile,  and  the  other  occupations  of  brisk 
Parisian  adolescence."  But  every  one  hasn't  the 
cockney  idea  of  leisure,  of  gayety,  of  every  state 
which  is  not  the  only  original  Carlylean  antidote 
for  human  misery.  You  see  what  Satan  would  find 
for  the  editor  of  the  "  St.  James's  Gazette  "  to  do  in 
case  of  idleness,  but  this  does  not  imply  that  M. 
Renan  means  debauch,  or  that  French  gayety  im- 
plies it.  If  the  French  are  deficient  in  spirituality 
and  conceive  spiritual  things  materially,  it  is  none 
the  less  true  that  they  look  at  material  things  in  an  \ 
extremely  spiritual  way.  The  result  is  a  pervasive  i 
vivacity,  a  sustained  blitheness,  whose  high  key  is 
preserved  with  the  same  delightful  ease  that  one 
observes  in  a  painting  by  Fortuny  ;  the  local  color 


78  FRENCH  TRAITS 

may  have  less  richness,  less  variety,  but  the  picture 
is  more  eflfective  ;  the  individual  may  "  wither,"  but 
the  world  is  indisputably  more  and  more — more  and 
more  important,  more  and  more  worthy.  And  this 
ensemble  cannot  be  obtained  by  frivolous  means. 
"H  faut  souflfrir  pour  voir  la  com^die,"  says  Doudan. 
The  French   are  ready  to  make  any  sacrifices  in 

I  order  to  enjoy  the  utmost  attainable.  Occasionally 
these  sacrifices  have  been  of  the  substance  m  grasp- 

iing  at  the  shadow.  Occasionally  French  good  sense 
(has  been  at  fault.  During  the  Second  Empire, 
whose  army  imposed  one  side  of  Paris  on  France 
entire,  the  French  ideal  of  the  development  of  the 
entire  man,  under  liberal  but.  decorous  mceurs,  was 
here  and  there  lost  in  the  "  ocean  of  excess."  The 
present  generation  shows  marks  of  this  enervation, 
but  the  recovery  of  moral  tonicity  after  the  Napole- 
onic debauch  is  most  noteworthy  and  most  con- 
spicuous. The  rejection  of  the  Reformation  is  a 
still  more  signal  instance  of  wrong  choosing  in  a 

;  great  crisis.     We  repeat  after  Michelet,  that  France 

I  rejected  the  Reformation  because  "  she  would  have 
no  moral  reform  ; "  and  we  do  not  enough  remem- 
ber the  political  necessities  of  Francis  I.  and 
Catharine  de'  Medici,  and  the  French  origin  of 
the  pollen  that  fructified  the  soil  out  of  which 
sprang  Huss  and  WycklifiFe.  But  by  France,  in  this 
instance,  we  really  mean,  though  we  are  perpetu- 
ally forgetting  it,  not  the  sound  heart  and  core  of 
the  nation,  but  a  luxm-ious  and  elegant  aristocracy 


MORALITY  79 

in  the  direct  current  of  Renaissance  laxity  and 
expansion — such  as  existed  in  Germany  no  more 
in  Luther's  time  than  in  any  other.  Doubtless 
with  an  ideal  of  personal  morality  France,  even 
then,  would  have  accepted  the  Reformation,  but 
she  is  so  solidaire  that  she  had  to  await  organic  and 
communal  agencies.  Republican  France,  that  is, 
France  genuine  and  articulate,  has,  however  irre- 
ligious, never  been  conspicuously  immoraL 

When  we  see  a  people  whose  qualities  are  thus 
national  and  whose  defects  are  individual,  when  we 
consider  that  the  whole  is,  everywhere  but  in  mathe- 
matics, something  other  than  the  sum  of  all  its  parts, 
it  seems  singular  that  the  distinction  I  have  dwelt 
on  between  social  and  personal  morality  should  be 
so  constantly  lost  sight  of.  Losing  sight  of  it 
is,  philosophically,  the  source  of  that  absurd  mis- 
conception of  Fi'ench  morality  with  which  I  began, 
and  to  lose  sight  of  it  both  schools  of  our  philosophy 
are  prone.  Let  me  refer  once  more  to  Condorcet — 
an  admirably  representative  Frenchman.  "  Prog- 
ress," in  Condorcet's  mind,  says  Mr.  John  Morley, 
"  is  exclusively  produced  by  improvement  in  intel- 
ligence " — progress  of  course  being  taken  to  mean 
progress  in  morality  as  well  as  in  enlightenment. 
Both  our  metaphysicians  and  our  utilitarians  deny 
this  theory.  To  the  former  nothing  seems  more 
clearly  self-evident,  or  more  clearly  verified  empiri- , 
cally,  than  the  maxim  "  Education  cannot  make  men ' 
moral."    Morality  depends  upon  the  will ;  you  can 


80  FRENCH  TRAITS 

reach  the  springs  of  the  will  only  through  the  heart 
Sanctification  is  therefore  scientific,  as  well  as  reli- 
i  gious,  doctrine.  Progress  consists  in  spreading 
sanctification.  Systematic  minds,  ultramontane 
avowedly  or  in  disguise,  identify  Church  and  State 
in  the  organic  unity  of  mankind  whose  saving  grace 
is  piety  and  whose  development  thus  depends  on  the 
centralized  and  authoritative  teaching  of  religion. 
This  philosophy,  whether  illustrated  at  Rome  or 
Geneva,  at  Smithfield  or  at  Salem,  has  generally 
shown  itself  to  be  associated  with  practical  disad- 
vantages which,  whatever  its  merits  or  however  per- 
fect its  reasoning,  have  put  the  Zeitgeist  out  of  con- 
ceit with  it  For  the  moment,  at  all  events,  this 
tyrant  is  more  favorably  disposed  to  the  ethics  of 
the  utihtarians,  as  illustrated  in  Mr.  Morley's  criti- 
cism of  Condorcet  for  omitting  "  the  natural  history 
of  western  morals,"  which  he  regards  as  "  a  result 
of  evolution  that  needed  historical  explanation  "  as 
much  as  the  evolution  of  the  intelligence — or,  as 
caricatured  by  Mr.  Adler  in  finding  the  ethics  of 
the  shepherds  and  fishermen  of  Galilee,  two  thou- 
sand years  ago,  rudimentary  beside  the  elaborate  re- 
sults reached  by  Societies  of  Ethical  Culture  to-day. 
Condorcet  would  reply  to  both  these  positions  by 
accusing  both  of  confusing  social  with  personal  mo- 
raUty.  He  would  perhaps  assure  ]\Ir.  Morley  that 
as  personal  morality  depends  solely  upon  obedience 
to  the  dictates  of  a  conscience  however  little  enlight- 
ened, any  mention  of  its  separate  evolution  as  an 


MORALITY  81 

element  of  progress  is  misleading.  In  reply  to  the 
metaphysicians  he  would  certainly  maintain  that, 
although  it  is  perfectly  true  that  **  education  cannot 
make  men  moral,"  it  is  equally  true  that  nothing  but 
education  can  make  mankind  moral.  He  would 
argue  with  President  Gilman  :  "There  is  no  better 
way  known  to  man  for  securing  intellectual  and 
moral  integrity  than  to  encourage  those  habits,  those 
methods  and  those  pursuits  which  tend  to  establish 
truth."  He  would  probably  point  out  the  dangers 
to  social,  of  a  too  exclusive  devotion  to  personal, 
morality  ;  and  indicate  the  unhappy  ethical  result  of 
a  passionless,  unintellectual,  unpersonally-investi- 
gated,  conventional  morality,  of  which  the  springs 
are  accepted  commonplaces.  He  would  assert  that, 
whereas  an  ignorant  man  might  be  as  moral  as  a 
savant,  there  is  no  record  of  any  unenlightened 
moral  community  ;  that  though  the  existence  of  an 
Alexander  VI.  is  compatible  with  learning  it  is  incon- 
sistent with  common  schools  ;  that  moral  develop- 
ment goes  on  in  the  community  as  a  spontaneous 
concomitant  of  general  intellectual  growth,  the  dis- 
covery of  one  age  being  the  morality  of  the  next ; 
that  the  "progress  of  morality  "  does  not  mean  the 
spread  of  the  disposition  to  do  one's  duty  as  one 
sees  it,  but  the  growth  of  the  conception  of  what 
duty  really  is.  "  Does  this  or  that  community  con- 
ceive this  or  that  to  be  right  or  wrong?  Is  its  moral 
ideal  salutary  or  not  ?  "  are  questions  whose  answers 
furnish  the  test  of  social  morality  and  depend  on 
6 


82  FRENCH  TRAITS 

illumination  rather  than  on  conscience.  Which  best 
serves  the  cause  of  social  morality,  the  Salvation 
Army  or  Girard  College,  Mr.  Moody  or  Harvard  Uni- 
versity ?  A  commimity  which  compasses  the  preven- 
tion of  cruelty  to  animals  may  conceivably  contain  a 
smaller  proportion  of  eminently  righteous  men  than 
one  which  burns  witches  or  sanctions  the  suttee, 
but  its  social  morality  is  distinctly  higher.  As  to 
communities,  it  is  the  French  notion  that  the 
attempt  to  anticipate  the  census  of  the  New  Jerusa- 
lem is  idle  ;  and  the  discovery,  through  mental  con- 
fusion, of  Sodoms  and  Gomorrahs  in  other  epochs 
and  distant  lands,  a  difficult  and  dangerous  proceed- 
ing. 


UJ 


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i 


{iy\ 


INTELLIGENCE 

.The  sensation  which  France  produces  on  the  im- 
pressionable foreigner  is  first  of  all  that  of  mental 
exhilaration.  Paris,  especially,  is  electric.  Touch 
it  at  any  point  and  you  receive  an  awakening  shock. 
Live  in  it  and  you  lose  all  lethargy.  Nothing  stag- 
nates. Everyone  visibly  and  acutely  feels  himself 
alive.  The  universal  vivacity  is  contagious.  You 
find  yourself  speaking,  thinking,  moving  faster,  but 
without  fatigue  and  without  futility.  The  moral 
air  is  tonic,  respiration  is  effortless,  and  energy  is 
unconscious  of  exertion.  Nowhere  is  there  so 
much  activity ;  nowhere  so  little  chaos.  Nowhere 
does  action  follow  thought  so  swiftly,  and  nowhere 
is  there  so  much  thinking  done.  Some  puissant 
force,  universal  in  its  operation,  has  manifestly  so 
exalted  the  spirit  of  an  entire  nation,  here  centred 
and  focussed,  as  to  produce  on  every  hand  that 
phenomenon  which  Schiller  admirably  characterizes 
in  declaring  that  "  the  last  perfection  of  our  quali- 
ties is  when  their  activity,  without  ceasing  to  be 
sure  and  earnest,  becomes  sport."  The  very  monu- 
ments of  the  past  are  as  steeped  in  its  influences  as 
the  boulevard  Babel  of  the  present.     The  grandiose 


86  FRENCH  TRAITS 

towers  and  severe  fa9ade  of  Notre  Dame  speak  the 
same  thought,  in  the  dialect  of  their  epoch,  that  the 
Pantheon  uttered  to  the  eighteenth  and  the  Arc  de 
rfitoile  declares  to  our  own  century.  The  pano- 
rama which  spreads  out  before  one  from  Mont- 
martre  or  St  Cloud  is  permeated  with  this  thought 
— as  distinct  to  the  mental  as  the  scene  itself  is  to 
the  physical  vision.  Paris  seems  to  stand  for  it — as 
did  the  Athens  of  Pericles  and  the  Florence  of  the 
Renaissance.  Like  them,  she  seems  to  symbolize 
the  apotheosis  of  intellect.  The  present  everywhere 
asserts  itself  with  superb  confidence;  the  entire 
environment  is  modem,  untraditional,  self-reliant; 
the  past  steps  down  from  the  tyrant's  chair  and  as- 
sumes with  dignity  the  pose  of  history,  while  stu- 
dents, not  votaries,  keep  it  free  from  the  dust  of  the 
hospitable  museums  that  harbor  ii  Is  not  each 
generation,  every  moment,  provided  with  the  hght  of 
its  own  mind — that  light  which  Carlyle  himself  un- 
warily calls  "the  direct  inspiration  of  the  Al- 
mighty?" Is  not  consciousness  the  greatest  of 
divine  gifts  to  man  ?  Is  not  intelligence  the  meas- 
ure of  his  distance  from  the  brutes,  the  bond  which 
unites  him  to  the  gods,  the  instrument  of  his  sal- 
vation ? 

This  confidence  in  the  syllogism,  this  belief  in  the 
human  intelligence,  this  worship  of  reason,  has  been 
characteristic  of  France  ever  since  the  nation  be- 
came conscious  of  itself  as  a  nation.  And  the  fact 
that  its  special  distinction  is  highly  developed  in- 


INTELLIGENCE  87 

telligence  is  perhaps  equally  a  cause  and  an  effect 
of  this.  The  form  taken  by  the  Eevolution,  that 
great  purge  and  renewer  of  the  modern  world,  was 
thus  wholly  natural.  It  embodied  the  nation's  belief 
in  the  saving  power  of  reason  and  its  impatience 
with  anomalies  and  absurdities.  The  desecration 
of  the  churches,  the  revolt  against  religion,  the  en- 
deavor to  infuse  life  into  antique  formularies  as 
jejune  as  they  were  classic,  the  mad  terror  at  the 
threatened  reimposition  by  Europe  of  the  old  an- 
archy. Napoleon's  career  of  conquest  carrying  the 
Eevolution  to  all  neighboring  peoples,  whether  they 
wanted  it  or  not — every  feature,  in  fact,  of  the  great 
upheaval  is  significant  of  the  nation's  confidence  in 
the  competence  of  mind  in  every  crisis.  That  the 
mutual  relations  of  long-existent  phenomena  could 
constitute  a  subtle  harmony  quite  apart  from  the 
absurd  and  anomalous  character  of  the  phenomena 
themselves,  and  wholly  beyond  the  power  of  mind 
to  see,  though  within  the  circle  of  instinctive  feel- 
ing, France  did  not  feel,  and  has  never  felt.  The 
belief  that  the  "increasing  purpose"  running 
through  the  ages  operates  through  any  other  agency 
than  that  of  the  human  intelligence  seems  fantastic 
to  French  reason.  Working  out  the  harmony  of 
the  universe  through  the  "ways  of  the  wicked"  or 
the  unconsciousness  of  the  good  it  views  with  com- 
plete scepticism.  Even  now  the  reactionary  French- 
man who  would  restore  the  ancien  regivie  feels  as  he 
does  because  he  likes  the  monarchic  ideal,  and  not 


88  FRENCH  TRAITS 

because  he  resents  the  rude  manner  of  its  taking 
off.  And  it  is  this  confidence  in  the  efficacy  of  the 
intelligence  which  makes  the  French  so  swift  to 
execute  their  ideas,  so  anxious  to  press  and  impose 
them.  The  trait  is  as  noticeable  in  personal  as  in 
public  matters,  in  the  social  as  in  the  political  arena. 
It  is  this  which  makes  them  so  enamoured  of  the 
positive  and  practical  truths;  and  it  is  their  pas- 
sionate attachment  to  these,  and  their  desire  to 
make  them  prevail,  which  splits  parties  into  groups, 
reverses  ministries,  produces  revolutions.  That  a 
thing  should  be  admitted  and  not  adopted  is  in- 
comprehensible to  the  French  mind  ;  that  it  should 
not  be  admitted  after  having  been  proved,  after  all 
that  may  be  said  against  it  has  been  answered,  and 
simply  because  of  an  instinctive  distrust  in  the  hu- 
man reason,  is  inconceivable  to  it. 

In  finding  intelligence  thus  universal  in  France, 
and  integral  in  the  French  nature,  I  mean,  of  course, 
to  confound  it  with  neither  culture  nor  erudition. 
I  mean  such  intelligence  as  Mr.  Hamerton  notes  in 
the  French  peasant  when  he  says  that  the  interval 
between  the  French  peasant  and  a  Kentish  laborer 
is  enormous,  densely  ignorant  as  both  may  be.  Or 
that  quality,  to  take  a  distinguished  example,  which 
enabled  Pascal,  who  had  no  reading,  to  anticipate  in 
the  seventeenth  century  such  a  hght  of  the  eigh- 
teenth as  Kant,  and  such  a  light  of  the  nineteenth 
as  Charles  Darwin.  It  is  the  quality  in  viiiue  of 
which  rich  and  poor,  educated  and  illiterate,  priest 


intelligencp:  89 

and  sceptic,  can  meet  on  common  ground  and  un- 
derstand each  other.  There  is,  intellectually  speak- 
ing, far  more  disinterestedness  than  elsewhere. 
People  divide  upon  ideas,  and  not  upon  prejudices, 
or  even  upon  interests.  Mind  entei-s  into  everything. 
Even  the  fool  reasons — which  is  perhaps  why  he  is 
the  most  intolei-able  fool  on  the  footstool.  The 
"  crank  "  is  unknown.  Respect  for  the  embodiment 
of  inteUigence  in  books,  science,  or  art,  and  for  the 
distinguished  in  these  lines  of  effort,  pervades  all 
ranks.  M.  Prudhomme  himself  cherishes  a  deep  re- 
gard for  them.  One  of  his  commonplaces  is :  "  La 
seule  aristocratic,  c'est  I'aristocratie  du  talent."  The 
heroes  of  French  society,  taken  in  the  large  sense, 
are  the  men  who  have  excelled  in  some  intellectual 
field.  English  qualities,  English  accomplishments, 
are  never  extolled  to  them  without  reminding  them 
of  the  contrast  in  this,  to  their  sense,  vital  regard 
between  the  materialism  of  England  and  their  own 
civilized  ideal.  Yet  such  is  the  elasticity  and  sup- 
pleness of  the  French  intelligence  that  whereas  Mr. 
Froude  exclaims  bitterly,  "In  England  the  literary 
class  has  no  standing  or  influence,"  M.  Philippe  Da- 
ryl  states  the  phenomenon  with  much  more  ration- 
al explicitness  in  saying,  "  Our  neighbors  regard 
their  men  of  letters  simply  as  specialists  fulfilling 
their  functions  in  the  general  work,  and  having  a 
jvist  claim,  in  the  division  of  profits,  to  their  rightful 
share  of  pay  and  esteem." 

It  is  impossible,  in  short,  to  read  French  books, 


90  FRENCH  TRAITS 

to  meet  French  people,  to  study  French  history, 
without  perceiving  that  the  unvarying  centre  of  tha 
national  target  is  the  truth,  the  fact,  the  reality. 
This  is  the  shining  disk  at  which  the  Frenchman 
aims,  in  criticism  as  in  construction,  in  art  as  in 
science.  Milton's  grandiose  and  beautiful  images 
strike  M.  Scherer  especially  because  they  are  true 
as  well — because  they  are,  as  he  says,  "tou jours 
justes  dans  leur  beaute."  The  drawing,  the  values, 
justness  of  tone,  redeem  any  picture,  however  frivo- 
lous its  meaning  ;  errors  in  these  respects  condemn 
any,  however  noble  its  sentiment.  Far  inferior  to 
Donatello  and  the  Greeks,  is  M.  Kodin's  judgment 
of  Michael  Angelo.  Far  superior  to  all  painters,  is 
Fromentin's  verdict  on  the  Dutch  masters.  The 
concluding  lines  of  the  "  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Um  " 
sum  up  the  French  belief  with  exactness,  as  they 
do  ours  only  by  extension  ;  and  it  is  at  once  the 
distinction  and  the  defect  of  French  literature  that 
it  may  be  justly  called  a  splendid  and  varied  formu- 
lation of  this  belief.  FamiHar  as  well  as  classic 
literature  bears  the  same  witnesa  Compare,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  intelligence,  the  "Causeries" 
of  Sainte-Beuve  with  those  of  Thackeray.  The 
"  Roundabout "  chat  may  have  more  charm,  more 
philosophy,  but  the  charm  and  the  philosophy  are 
both  sentimental.  But  for  their  magical  style  they 
would  be  doomed  to  oblivion  long  before  Sainte- 
Beuve's  judgments  reached  the  fulness  of  their 
fame.  A  great  deal  has  been  said — and  said  in  France 


INTELLIGENCE  91 

itself — in  praise  of  the  English  essay,  its  delightful 
indiscretions,  its  personal  intimacy.  But  when  a 
Frenchman  has  anything  analogous  to  do,  he  does 
it  on  a  plane  of  the  intelligence  distinctly  higher 
than  that  of  the  vast  majority  of  English  essays 
since  their  origin  in  the  sentimental  "Spectator." 
M.  Kenan,  M.  Pailleron,  M.  Anatole  France,  the 
most  diverse  Fi-ench  essayists,  even  in  a  department 
of  effort  which  is  regarded  rather  as  a  digression 
and  diversion,  agree  in  dealing  quite  exclusively 
with  the  thinking  power.  In  this  field,  as  in  others, 
there  is  undoubtedly  a  great  deal  of  inferior  work 
done,  but  it  is  inferior  in  a  different  way  from  our 
inferior  productions  of  the  kind  ;  it  is  pedantic,  or 
superficial,  or  prosy,  or  stilted — it  is  not  flat,  emo- 
tional, and  unintelligent.  And  of  the  really  supe- 
rior work  it  is  difficult  to  overestimate  the  amount 
or  the  superiority.  For  one  English  or  American, 
German  or  Italian  novelist,/e«i7/e^onts^e,  chroniqueur, 
critic  of  dignified  capacity,  there  are  a  dozen,  a 
score,  French  ones.  In  Spain  and  Italy  French  wares 
visibly  outnumber  the  native  ones  in  the  book-stores. 
Commerce  carries  French  books  to  as  remote  regions 
as  it  does  Sheffield  cutlery  or  Manchester  cotton- 
ades.  In  America  we  have  simply  no  notion  of  how 
in  this  way  the  French  ideal  disseminates  itself  from 
Tangier  to  St.  Petersburg.  In  every  country  it  is 
an  affectation  to  talk  French  ;  the  duUest  prig  thus 
feels  himself  at  once  artistically  occupied.  The 
whole  intellectual  movement  of  Latin   Europe  is 


92  FRENCH   TRAITS 

French.  Scientifically,  of  course,  France  follows 
the  lead  of  the  Germans,  of  the  English.  The  emi- 
nence of  M.  Pasteur  is  somewhat  solitary,  perhaps. 
But  science  and  erudition  are  special  provinces  of 
accomplishment,  and  it  is  in  the  development,  and 
diffusion  of  native  intelligence  in  its  general  and 
humane  aspects  that  the  French  strength  lies.  If 
M.  Pasteur  is  not  one  of  a  group  of  which  he  is 
primus  inter  pares,  as  might  have  been  said  of  Mr. 
Darwin,  and  as  may  perhaps  be  said  now  of  Helm- 
holtz,  his  vogue  is  far  greater  than  that  of  any  of  his 
foreign  contemporaiies.  Millions  of  Englishmen 
never  heard  of  Professor  Huxley.  Millions  of  Ger- 
mans are  ignorant  of  Helmholtz's  existence.  There 
are,  in  comparison,  few  Frenchmen,  probably,  who 
do  not  know  that  M  Pasteur  is  one  of  "  les  gloires 
de  la  France." 

And  the  national  turn  for  intellectual  seriousness 
is  as  conspicuous  in  the  periodical  press  as  in  liter- 
ature. The  press,  in  fact,  is  literature  to  a  degree 
unknown  in  England  and  among  ourselves.  The 
"journalist"  and  the  litterateur  are  not  distinct,  as 
one  has  only  to  read  the  journals  that  flourish  and 
the  journals  that  struggle  to  perceive  that  they  are 
here.  Indeed,  our  most  eminent  "journalists,"  who 
seem  now  to  be  getting  the  upperhand  of  the 
"  merely  literary  "  writers  and  establishing  them- 
selves as  a  class,  resent  being  confounded  with  the 
latter,  and  hold  the  same  opinion  of  them  as  Mr. 
Cameron,  of  Pennsylvania.      They  address  them- 


INTELLIGENCE  93 

selves  very  little  to  tbe  intelligence,  and  exercise 
their  own  wits,  which  are  unsurpassed,  in  providing 
attractive  bait  for  that  popular  variety  of  gudgeon 
known  as  "the  average  man"  and  "the  general 
reader,"  and  known  to  be  endowed  with  only  a  rudi- 
mentary digestive  apparatus  for  the  things  of  the 
mind.  They  have  a  corresponding  disregard  for 
French  journalism,  to  which  "  enterprise "  is  un- 
known, and  which  appeals  far  more  exclusively  to 
the  intelligence.  "  A  new  idea  every  day,"  Emile  de 
Girardin  maintained  was  the  secret  of  successful' 
journalism  ;  following  it,  he  became  the  most  suc- 
cessful journalist  of  his  time.  And  ideas  are,  in 
Paris,  so  far  more  numerous  and  fecund  than  are 
our  kind  of  sensations,  even  manufactured  sensa- 
tions, that  Paris  has  on  an  average  some  eighty 
odd  daily  papers.  If  the  "  Figaro  "  desires  to  be  es- 
pecially startling,  it  gets  M.  Mirbeau,  or  M.  Grand- 
lieu,  or  M.  Saint-Genest,  to  exalt  some  disquieting 
ineptitude  into  plausibility  ;  it  does  not  procure  bo- 
gus interviews,  or  print  a  broadside  of  private  let- 
ters, or  invent  a  puerile  hoax.  The  police  reports 
are  fewer  and  infinitely  less  elaborate.  Names  and 
dates  are  no  more  important  to  the  interest  of  an 
actual  than  to  that  of  an  imaginary  drama.  The 
law  imposes  respect  for  privacy,  but  the  law  has 
the  full  support  of  the  public,  which  would  find 
our  "  Personal "  columns,  our  "Here  and  There," 
our  "  Men  of  To-Day,"  our  "  Society  "  news,  and,  in 
fine,  our  entire  pre-occupation  with  vapid  person* 


94  FRENCH  TRAIT8 

ality,  simply  unreadable.  The  gossip  of  the  Frencli 
press  is  pompous  and  pretentious,  but  it  is  not 
pitched  in  either  the  lackey  or  the  parvenu  key.  In- 
terviewing is  still  an  occasional  eccentricity.  Who 
ever  has  anything  interesting  to  say  is  able  and  pre- 
fers to  say  it  himself  in  his  own  way.  And  all  that 
is  not  "  enterprise  "  is  very  much  better  done  than 
with  us.  Criticism  follows  the  movement  in  art,  in 
literature,  and  in  science  far  more  closely  and  more 
discreetly.  Of  even  tolerable  criticism  we  have, 
speaking  strictly,  very  little  ;  and  the  best,  the  very 
best,  is  apt  to  consist  of  the  specific  judgment  of  the 
specialist  concerning  the  immediate  case  in  hand — 
a  high-class  and  conscientiously  executed  "  Guide  to 
Bookbuyers,"  in  a  word  ;  excellent  in  its  way,  but 
also  eloquent  of  the  lack  of  the  humanized  public 
which  demands  real  criticism — criticism  of  scope, 
full  of  generalizations,  bringing  to  bear  trained  fao- 
tilties  and  stored  wisdom  to  the  task  of  that  con- 
structive work  which  shows  the  relations  as  well  as 
the  character  of  its  subject.  Even  in  political  and 
social  discussion  our  journals  show  a  gingerliness  in 
deaUng  with  genei*alization,  which  indicates  clearly 
that  it  is  an  article  suspected  of  their  customera 
The  attitude  toward  it  of  the  latter  is  evidently  very 
much  that  of  Q'Connell's  fish-wife  to  the  word 
"  parallelopipedon."  Yet  of  that  amplification,  his- 
torical allusion,  elementary  erudition,  and  cheap 
rhetorical  embroidery  which  some  of  our  successful 
editorial  writers  assimilate  from  their  text-book,  Ma- 


INTELLIGENCE  96 

caulay — of  that  kind  of  writing,  in  short,  which  ad- 
dresses unintelligent  admiration  of  the  things  of  the 
mind,  the  veriest  Gradgrinds  of  our  public  seem 
never  to  tire.  Of  course,  the  system  of  signing  ar- 
ticles which  obtains  in  France  would  prick  these 
bubbles,  were  they  blown  there,  but  it  is  evident 
that  the  public  has  no  taste  for  them.  The  French 
pubhc  is  pleased  with  its  own  follies  and  fatuities  ; 
it  has  its  own  superficiality  and  its  own  variety  of 
provincialism.  It  suffers  especially  from  that  hyper- 
trophy of  the  inteUigence,  chronic  esprit,  as  one  of 
the  prominent  but  hardly  serious  journals  shows  in 
melancholy  distinction  ;  every  morning  it  gives  one  a 
picture  of  the  mental  wreck,  the  state  of  irresponsi- 
biUty,  reached  by  a  concentrated  and  exclusive  de- 
velopment of  a  talent  for  esprit,  of  which  the  first- 
fruits  were  immensely  clever,  but  which  culminated 
with  the  Second  Empire,  whose  hollowness  it  had 
done  so  much  to  expose.  But  imagine  the  subscrib- 
ers of  "  L'Intransigeant,"  or  of  "  L'Autorite,"  reading 
our  journals  of  the  same  grade  of  seriousness.  And  it 
is  impossible  to  take  up  a  French  paper  of  the  better 
class  without  being  struck  by  the  way  in  which  it  is 
written,  by  the  security  which  the  writer  evidently 
feels  in  the  capacity  of  his  readers  to  understand 
him  completely,  and  by  his  equally  evident  con- 
sciousness that  emotional  appeals,  dialectical  so- 
phisms, ingenious  beggings  of  the  question,  insin- 
cere extenuations,  impudent  exaggerations,  and  the 
rest  of  this  order  of  artillery  which  plays  so  promi- 


96  FRENCH  TRAITS 

nent  a  part  in  our  newspaper-warfare,  will  avail  him 
nothing  if  his  reader  be  not  in  sympathy  with  him, 
or  his  presentation  of  his  case  be  neither  sound  nor 
attractive.  There  is,  in  consequence,  a  sort  of 
"take  it  or  leave  it  "  air  about  the  French  newspa- 
per article  that  speaks  volumes  for  the  intelligence  of 
its  readers.  Its  moral  attitude  is  that  of  'SL  Halevy's 
"Insurge,"  to  whom,  even  in  the  supreme  crisis  of 
mortal  peril,  the  idea  of  influencing  his  judges  by 
emotional  appeal,  or  by  sophistical  distortion  of  a 
plain  case,  does  not  even  occur. 

Very  superficial  observation,  very  slight  intro- 
spection, suffice  to  assure  us,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  we  need  not  go  to  the  press  for  illustration  of 
the  opposite  attitude.  In  every  circle  the  most 
singular  paradoxes  are  current.  They  are  amply 
sustained  by  that  ingenuity  of  dialectic  which  is  a 
perversion  of  one's  own  and  an  aflfront  to  others*  in- 
telligence. "  Things  are  what  they  are,"  says  Bishop 
Butler,  "and  the  consequences  of  them  will  be  what 
they  will  be.  Why,  then,  should  we  desire  to  be 
deceived  ?  "  Simply  because  there  are  other  con- 
siderations more  valuable  in  our  eyes  than  avoiding 
being  deceived.  If  we  did  not  suffer  ourselves  to  be 
duped,  if  we  did  not  at  need  elaborately  dupe  our- 
selves, such  is  our  idea  of  duty  that  conscience 
would  not  permit  us  to  do  certain  things,  an  irre- 
sistible impulsion  towards  which,  according  to  % 
reverend  theory,  we  owe  to  the  momentum  of  the 
fall  of  our  progenitor,  Adam.     Either  these  things 


INTELLIGENCE  97 

do  not  tempt  the  Frenchman,  or  his  intelligence 
perceives  their  noxiousness,  or  he  yields  to  them 
with  his  eyes  open  and  does  not  seek  to  elude  pun- 
ishment in  sophistication.  Ethically  speaking,  he 
thus  escapes  cant ;  but  he  escapes  also,  in  the  entire 
moral  sphere,  the  dangers  arising  from  mental  con- 
fusion. He  feels  that  talking,  writing,  argument, 
cleverness,  can  change  nothing  in  the  constitution 
of  things,  that  emotional  seriousness  wUl  not  trans- 
form intellectual  levity,  and  consequently  he  de- 
velops no  taste  for  that  Anglo-Saxon  passion  known 
to  him  as  these — that  is  to  say,  argument  for  argu- 
ment's sake.  He  is  not  attracted  by  the  suppositi- 
tious. His  mind  has  no  "Pickwickian  "phases.  His 
triumph  in  a  contest  in  intellectual  dexterity  would 
be  empoisoned  by  fear  lest  his  skill  be  taken  for 
sincerity,  and  his  mind,  accordingly,  supposed  in- 
genious rather  than  acute,  imaginative  rather  than 
sure  and  sound.  He  avoids  thus  the  confusion  of 
temper  and  passion  in  all  discussion.  Temper  and 
passion  mean  deviation  from  the  end  in  view ;  they 
prevent  the  object  from  being  seen  "  in  itself  as  it 
really  is  ; "  emotion  is  quite  dissociated  with  getting 
at  that,  and,  therefore,  though  the  social  and  artistic 
impulses  lead  the  Frenchman  to  express  a  great 
deal  of  emotion  at  times,  to  become  apparently  ex- 
cited in  a  way  which  would  in  our  case  indicate  the 
submersion  of  the  intelligence  by  a  flood  of  passion, 
his  emotional  expression  is  generally  decorative,  so 
to  speak,  rather  than  structural.  Withal  the  French 
7 


98  FRENCH  TRAIT8 

intelligence  seems  to  have  almost  no  frivolous  sida 
The  different  varieties  of  mental  arithmetic,  guessing- 
games,  puzzles,  puns,  spiritualism,  theosophy,  fa- 
naticisms, have  no  attractions  for  it.  It  instinctively 
shrinks  from  all  such  desultory  and  futile  manifes- 
tations of  the  scientific  spirit.  When  a  famous 
"  mind-reader,"  who  has  excited  the  earnest  interest 
of  both  branches  of  our  great  race,  was  in  Paris,  a 
few  years  ago,  one  of  the  papers  expressed  the  gen- 
eral feeling  in  the  suggestion  that  a  pin  be  hid  on  a 
transport  about  to  sail  for  Tonquin  in  order  that 
the  mind-reader's  success  in  finding  it  might  be 
the  means  of  taking  him  definitively  away  from  a 
wearied  public. 

life  is  almost  never  in  France  taken  en  amateur, 
as  it  is  so  largely  with  us  at  the  present  epoch.  It 
is  taken,  rather,  en  connaisseur.  People  do  not  do 
things  merely  from  the  love  of  them,  without  regard 
to  their  capacity  for  doing  them.  Every  lover  of 
literature  does  not  make  versea  Every  lover  of  the 
drama  does  not  write  a  play.  It  is  not  in  France  a 
distinction  for  a  person  of  particularly  literary  tastes 
not  to  have  attempted  a  novel.  The  love  of  knowl- 
edge is  not  perhaps  as  insatiable  as  with  us,  but  it 
is  infinitely  more  judicious.  Interest  in  a  wide  range 
of  subjects  is  not  accepted  by  its  possessor  as  the 
equivalent  of  encyclopaedic  erudition,  any  more  than 
it  is  so  accepted  with  us  by  the  acquaintances  of  its 
possessor.  "  Aspire  to  know  all  things,"  says  M. 
Benan  to  the  French  youth ;  "  the  limits  will  appear 


INTELLIGENCE  99 

soon  enough."  No  American  Chiron  could  wisely 
give  such  advice  to  our  Achilleses.  And  to  many 
of  our  universal  aspirants  the  word  "  limits  "  can 
have  really  no  meaning,  since  to  the  appetite  of  the 
pure  amateur  it  has  no  application.  The  true  con- 
noisseur, on  the  other  hand,  the  Frenchman,  pro- 
ceeds by  exclusion.  To  enjoy,  he  needs  to  know  ; 
and  to  know,  everyone  needs  to  select.  We  get 
along  very  well  without  selecting,  because  even  in 
the  intellectual  sphere  it  is  our  susceptibility,  rather 
than  our  intelligence,  that  seeks  satisfaction.  But 
about  a  thousand  practical  and  positive  topics  the 
Frenchman,  who  speaks  from  experience  and  ex- 
amination, finds  our  views  speculative  and  imma- 
ture. We,  who  have  enough  Teutonism  in  us  to  en- 
joy the  vague,  and  of  ourselves  demand  only  that  it 
be  also  the  vast,  find  him  in  turn  a  trifle  hard,  a 
trifle  narrow,  a  trifle  professional.  He  is,  in  fact, 
terribly  explicit.  His  exactness,  were  it  not  relieved 
by  so  many  humane  qualities,  would  be  excessively 
unsympathetic.  It  is  not,  however,  the  exactness  of 
the  pedant.  It  is  the  precision  of  perfect  candor 
and  clairvoyance  exercised  on  objects  wholly  within 
its  range  of  vision  and  undisturbed  by  anxiety  as  to 
what  lies  outside.  Of  that  the  intelligence  gives  no 
report,  and  to  the  Frenchman  the  "  immediate  be- 
holding "  of  Kant  and  Coleridge  is  the  same  pure 
abstraction  that  it  was  to  Carlyle.  In  this  way,  and 
owing  to  the  professional  view  taken  of  it,  life  be- 
comes an  exceedingly  specialized  a£fair.     It  lacks 


100  FRENCH  TRAITS 

the  element  of  uncertainty.  That  of  each  individual 
is  in  great  measure  prearranged.  Given  the  cir- 
cumstances, which  in  France  it  is  not  difficult  to 
predict,  and  it  may  even  easily  be  foretold.  It  will 
not  be  deflected  by  whim  or  fancy.  Only  in  rare 
instances  will  it  be  transfigured  by  passion.  The 
individual  is  too  rational  to  be  swerved  by  senti- 
ment, and  it  is  sentiment  that  is  the  great  source  of 
the  unforeseen  and  the  unexpected. 

Mr.  !Matthew  Arnold  was  not  long  ago  praising  us ' 
for  our  straight-thinking,  or  at  all  events  telling  his 
countrymen  that  our  thinking  is  straighter  than 
theirs.  The  compliment  is  a  gracious  one,  but  to 
be  told  that  we  think  "  straighter  "  than  Englishmen 
ought  not  to  make  us  conceited.  A  comparison  of 
our  own  with  French  thinking,  in  this  respect  of 
straightness,  could  not  fail  to  have  a  less  flattering 
result  We  are  not,  to  be  sure,  like  the  English, 
handicapped  by  the  dilemma  of  either  thinking 
crookedly  or  else  admitting  that  much  of  the  consti- 
tution of  our  society,  its  ideals  and  its  ambitions,  its 
objects  of  admiration  and  of  ridicule,  is  anomalous 
and  antiquated.  But  to  fancy  our  thinking  as  free 
from  prejudice  and  confusion  as  that  of  a  society 
where  cant  is  unknown,  even  though  its  substitute 
be  fatuity,  would  be  clear  optimism.  Upon  a  vast 
body  of  intellectual  matters  our  thinking  is  not 
straight  because  it  is,  in  these  matters,  dependent 
upon  certain  firmly  held  notions  which  would  be 
seriously  compromised  if  we  were  not  careful  to 


INTELLIGENCE  101 

keep  one  eye  on  them,  whatever  subject  we  may  be 
dealing  with  at  the  moment.  If  I  admit  this  in  re- 
gard to  A,  what  will  be  the  effect  of  the  admission 
upon  the  opinion  I  hold  in  regard  to  X?  is  a  com- 
mon mental  reflection  with  us  when  brought  face  to 
face  with  certain  topics.  This  is  never  the  mental 
attitude  of  the  Frenchman,  who  looks  at  the  matter 
in  hand  with  absolute  directness.  He  has  an  in- 
stinctive dislike  of  the  confusion  which  results  from 
thinking  of  more  than  one  thing  at  a  time,  an  in- 
stinctive disposition  to  look  at  it  simply  and  post- 
pone all  consideration  of  its  consequences — about 
which  we  are  in  general  deeply  concerned.  He 
readily  makes  sacrifices  to  insure  clearness.  The 
American  habit  of  hedging  in  advance  against  a  pos- 
sible change  of  opinion  in  the  event  of  later  in- 
formation (a  clumsy  device  for  avoiding  the  brutality 
of  downrightness,  much  in  vogue  with  our  "sub- 
tler "  writers)  is  unknown  to  him.  One  remarks  all 
this  in  the  first  discussion  among  Frenchmen  that 
he  listens  to  or  shares.  Possibly  owing  in  part  to 
temperament,  to  a  certain  insouciance,  to  a  convic- 
tion that  the  destinies  of  empires  are  not  really  be- 
ing decided,  the  admissions  made,  the  easy  acknowl- 
edgment of  mistake,  are  surprising.  But,  mainly, 
these  phenomena  are  to  be  ascribed  to  the  straighter 
thinking  of  the  French  mind,  to  its  unembarrassed 
poise,  its  genius  for  clearness,  its  confidence  in  it- 
self. 
At  the  bottom  of  our  own  peculiarities  in  the 


102  FRENCH  TRAITS 

matter  of  thinking  lies  certainly  an  inherited  dis- 
trust in  the  intelligence  working  thus  simply  and 
freely.  Of  Butler's  saying,  before  cited,  namely, 
that  "things  are  what  they  are,  and  the  conse- 
quences of  them  will  be  what  they  will  be,"  Mr. 
Arnold  admirably  affirms  that  "to  take  in  and  to 
digest  such  a  sentence  as  that  is  an  education  in 
moral  and  intellectual  veracity."  Every  Frenchman 
is  thus  educated,  however,  and  Mr.  Arnold's  further 
remark,  that  "  intensely  Butlerian  as  the  sentence 
is,  Butler  came  to  it  because  he  is  English,"  seems 
fantastic.  He  came  to  see  the  importance  of  saying 
it  because  of  his  English  environment.  To  a  French- 
man it  is  an  accepted  commonplace.  And,  indeed, 
we,  if  we  withdraw  our  attention  for  a  moment  from 
the  ingrained  Anglo-Saxon  indisposition  to  credit  it 
in  practice,  and  look  at  the  maxim  clearly  and 
straightforwardly,  as  at  a  mere  intellectual  proposi- 
tion— as  a  Frenchman  looks  at  all  maxims  or  other 
arrangements  of  words  in  sentences — we  can  feel 
that  it  loses  something  of  its  apparently  sensational 
profundity.  But  in  practice,  owing  to  our  Enghsh 
hereditament,  we  do  not  simply  bring  our  conscious- 
ness to  bear  upon  any  point  and,  after  listening  to 
its  report,  deem  our  whole  duty  discharged — even 
if  the  point  be  a  maxim  which  we  can,  on  close  in- 
spection, perceive  to  be  axiomatic.  In  practice  our 
English  instinct  warns  us  against  being  sure  that 
things  are  what  to  the  unaided  intelligence  they 
seem  to  be  ;  we  have  no  confidence  that  there  is  any 


INTELLIGENCE  103 

predetermined  law  governing  their  consequences ; 
and  if  there  be,  we  are  not  at  all  sure  there  is  not 
some  excellent  reason  why  we  should  wish  to  be  de- 
ceived. The  entire  history  of  the  development  of 
the  British  constitution,  which  we,  in  common  with 
Englishmen,  admire  not  more  for  its  results  than 
for  the  method  by  which  these  have  been  attained, 
is  a  conspicuous  illustration  of  this.  No  more 
forcible  example  of  the  difference  between  the 
French  attitude  toward  the  intelligence  and  our 
own  could  be  adduced.  The  French  way  of  arriv- 
ing at  their  constitution  we,  in  fact,  do  not  recog- 
nize as  a  development — as,  indeed,  for  the  past  two 
centuries  and  a  half  it  has  not  been  ;  the  Tiers  £tat 
knew  nearly  as  well  what  it  wanted  in  1615  as  it 
does  to-day,  and  since  then  the  "development"  of 
French  society  has  consisted  largely  in  converting 
its  intelligence  into  statutory  enactments.  But 
whenever  we  think  of  what  httle  we  know  of  this 
growth  of  French  institutions  it  is  with  either  con- 
tempt or  compassion  for  the  French  inability  to 
make  haste  slowly,  for  their  unwise  hurry  to  draw 
the  conclusion  after  both  premises  are  settled,  for 
their  conviction  that  the  order  of  nature  insures 
things  being  what  they  are,  for  their  blindness  to 
Burke's  ingenious  tabling  of  discussion  in  insisting 
that  regard  should  only  be  had  to  "man's  nature  as 
modified  by  his  habits,"  for,  in  a  word,  their  over- 
weening and  short-sighted  confidence  in  the  efficacy 
of  the  intelligence.     We  philosophize  in  this  way 


104  FRENCH   TRAITS 

about  matters  of  large  importance,  just  as  our  Eng- 
lish cousins  do  about  all  matters — from  the  blessings 
of  inequality  to  the  speciousness  of  the  decimal  sys- 
tem. 

Nothing,  of  course,  is  more  foreign  to  the  French 
mind  than  this  attitude,  which  it  is  probably  as  in- 
capable of  appreciating  in  others  as  of  assuming 
itself.  It  never  even  aflfects  "  the  humiUty  becom- 
ing such  doubtful  things  as  human  conclusions,"  to 
use  an  Enghsh  writer's  phrase.  It  regards  such 
"  humility "  very  much  as  metaphysicians  regard 
the  similar  distrust  of  the  authority  of  consciousness 
which  sometimes  distresses  the  beginner  in  psychol- 
ogy— as  distrust,  namely,  of  "  the  measure,"  in  Cole- 
ridge's words,  "of  everything  else  which  we  deem 
certain."  In  virtue  thus  of  their  taking  intelUgence 
seriously,  the  French  make,  it  must  be  acknowledged, 
very  much  more  frequent  use  of  it  than  we  do;  and 
as  nothing  develops  and  polishes  a  quality  so  much 
as  cultivation,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  strike 
unprejudiced  observers  as  in  this  respect  our  supe- 
riors. Englishmen  do  not  in  the  least  mind  this,  as 
a  rule.  An  American  is  perhaps  less  philosophic. 
The  things  of  the  mind  are  more  esteemed  by  us. 
We  have  more  respect  for  professors  and  "  literary 
fellows."  And  although  these  and  their  congeners 
are  more  numerous  in  England,  and  in  quaHty  also 
"average  higher"  there  no  doubt,  they  certainly 
make  less  impression  upon  the  pbilistine  mass  which 
surrounds  them,  and  are  more  completely  a  class  by 


INTELLIGENCE  105 

themselves  than  with  us.  Our  vulgarity  is  of  quite 
a  different  type  from  English  vulgarity ;  having  no 
"  brutalized  "  class  below  it,  it  is  less  contemptuous, 
and  having  no  "  materialized  "  class  above  it,  it  is 
not  obsequious  and  pusillanimous.  It  is  perhaps, 
for  these  reasons,  louder,  more  full  of  swagger,  more 
offensive ;  but  it  is  manly  and  intelligent.  Our 
rapidly  increasing  leisure  class  is  itself  felt  to  be 
more  conspicuously  lacking  in  other  qualities  than 
intelligence  when  it  is  compared  or,  rather,  con- 
trasted (for  of  course  nothing  can  be  so  compared) 
with  the  British  upper-class.  On  the  whole,  occu- 
pied in  the  main  as  our  intelligence  may  be  with 
purely  material  subjects,  and  ignorant  as  it  may 
be  of  the  importance  of  any  others — deficient, 
that  is  to  say,  as  it  may  be  in  culture — it  is  never- 
theless one  of  the  great  American  forces,  and  is  re- 
spected as  such  and  gloried  in.  The  ordinary  Eng- 
lishman finds  the  ordinary  American  thin,  sharp, 
stridulous,  eager,  and  nervous,  but  he  also  unques- 
tionably finds  him  clever  as  well ;  the  defects  he 
notes  are  not  defects  of  intelligence. 

But  after  all  is  said  that  need  be  said  of  us  in 
this  respect,  and  however  greatly  our  esteem  for 
intelligence  may  excel  that  of  the  English,  the  fact 
remains  that  we  are  in  no  sort  of  danger  of  allowing 
this  esteem  to  become  excessive.  We  have  nothing 
like  the  confidence  in  the  intelligence  which  the 
French  have.  It  is  one  of  our  tools  in  the  work  of 
society  building.     With  the  French  it  is  a  talisman. 


106  FRENCH  TRAITS 

We  do  not,  in  a  word,  begin  to  take  it  as  seriously 
as  the  French  do.  The  Frenchman  would  probably 
address  us  on  this  subject  somewhat  in  this  wise : 
"  Your  intelligence  is  certainly  agile  and  alert,  es- 
pecially when  compared  with  your  English  cousins', 
but  you  certainly  exhibit  it  frivolously.  No  extrava- 
gance is  too  great  for  your  thinking.  You  are  con- 
stantly trying  experiments  in  thinking,  constructing 
for  yourselves  notions  of  this  and  that — not  at  all 
with  reference  to  any  experience,  but  wilfully. 
Moreover,  you  have  an  opinion  upon  every  imagin- 
able topic,  and  you  do  not  consider  it  at  all  neces- 
sary to  give  any  substantial  reason  for  it.  You 
have,  it  is  true,  a  nervous  dread  of  inconsistency, 
and  exercise  a  great  deal  of  ingenuity  to  avoid  the 
appearance  of  it.  But  the  exercise  of  ingenuity  in 
this  way  is  itself  frivolous  ;  it  demonstrates  a  lack 
of  confidence  in  the  intelligence  as  such,  one  of 
whose  chief  qualities  is  flexibility.  Flexible,  thus, 
you  rarely  are,  though  you  are  certainly,  spite  of 
all  your  ingenuity,  not  a  little  variable.  And  it  is 
not  new  light,  but  a  different  emotion,  which  makes 
you  so.  Your  opinions  are  very  apt  to  be  partis  pris 
— not,  d  I'anglaise,  out  of  habit  and  tradition,  but 
out  of  pure  freak  and  whim.  You  are  not,  in  our 
sense,  sincere.  You  are,  of  course,  perfectly  honest, 
but  in  importing  whim  and  fantasy  into  the  domain 
of  pure  intelligence  you  are  not  serious  ;  you  are 
guilty  of  intellectual  levity.  You  tell  us  (or,  out  of 
caution,  the  habit  of  business  reserve,  civility    or 


INTELLIGENCE  107 

what  not,  you  do  not  tell  us)  your  notions  about 
ourselves,  for  example.  You  have,  at  all  events,  no 
hesitation  in  forming  opinions  of  the  most  positive 
kind  as  to  our  character,  our  manners,  our  art  and 
politics.  To  mention  politics  alone,  you  have  strong 
doubts  as  to  the  continuance  of  the  present  repub- 
lic ;  fancy  us  in  danger  of  anarchy  from  unrestricted 
socialist  agitation,  yet  condemn  our  cruelty  toward 
Louise  Michel ;  alternately  predict  a  king  and  a 
Radical  dictator  for  us  ;  pronounce  us  grasping  in 
Madagascar,  faithless  in  Tunis,  pusillanimous  in 
Egypt ;  attach  weight  to  M.  Rochefort's  utterances  ; 
anticipate  cabinet  crises  ;  become  '  humorous '  over 
the  unexpected  duration  of  the  present  ministry — 
all  without  any  such  acquaintance  with  us,  our  in- 
stitutions, history,  and  present  condition,  as  would 
be  necessary  really  to  justify  you,  if  you  took  such 
matters  seriously,  in  holding  any  notions  at  all  in 
regard  to  us.  You  think  a  great  deal.  Your  intel- 
ligence is  very  active.  But  you  wiU  forgive  my 
frankness  in  saying  that  it  is,  to  our  sense,  a  shade 
lacking  in  self  respect.  Doubtless  you  have  some 
other  touchstone  for  discovering  truth,  of  which  we 
are  ignorant,  or  perhaps  some  substitute  for  truth 
itself.  Your  inventiveness  is  immense.  You  are 
the  people  of  the  future." 

The  French  quick-wittedness,  again,  differs  from 
our  own  as  much  as  their  straight-thinking  does. 
Clearness  is  not  more  characteristic  of  French 
thought  than  celerity.    The  constant,  unintermittent 


108  FRENCH  TRAITS 

activity  of  the  French  consciousness  assists  power- 
fully to  secure  thia  It  keeps  the  intelligence  free 
at  once  from  preoccupation  and  from  distraction. 
With  us  the  man  who  sees  quickly  is  apt  not  to  see 
clearly.  He  is  rather  the  man  of  imagination  than 
of  clairvoyance.  He  divines,  guesses,  feels  what  you 
mean.  He  runs  ahead  of  your  thought,  anticipates 
it  wrongly  often,  if  the  data  of  his  augury  as  to 
your  probable  meaning  are  insufficient.  Sometimes 
he  makes  ludicrous  errors ;  sometimes  he  becomes 
very  expert  at  concealing  his  misconceptions  and 
appearing  acutely  sympathetic,  with  really  very 
slight  title  thereto  ;  his  agiUty  of  appreciation  ri- 
vals the  artificially  developed  memory  of  the  habit- 
ual liar.  But  all  this  is  presence  of  mind  rather 
than  quick-wittedness.  There  is  a  perversion  of 
the  pure  intelligence  about  it  that  is  almost  tragic. 
Our  truly  clairvoyant  man  sees  slowly  in  compari- 
son with  the  Frenchman,  though  I  think  we  may 
say  in  comparison  with  the  Frenchman  alone.  His 
solidity  of  character  gives  him  an  instinctive  dis- 
hke,  an  instinctive  mistrust,  of  fragmentariness.  He 
must  first  make  the  circuit  of  any  object  before  per- 
mitting himself  really  to  perceive  any  of  its  facets  ; 
he  must  reflect  upon  its  relations  before  he  can 
realize  its  existence.  The  Frenchman  meantime 
has  contemplated,  comprehended,  and  forgotten. 
Not  only  is  his  own  intelligence  singly  developed, 
but  he  lives  in  an  atmosphere  in  which  care  for  the 
inteUigence  is  almost  exclusive.     He  is  thus  en- 


INTELLIGENCE  109 

abled  to  treat  propositions  by  themselves.  He  does 
not  ask  what  the  propounder  is  driving  at  in  gen- 
eral, before  consenting  to  comprehend  the  specific 
statement  at  the  moment.  He  would  not,  for  ex- 
ample, before  opening  his  mind  to  the  subject  of 
national  characteristics,  require  to  know  which  ones 
were  personally  preferable  to  the  chronicler  and 
commentator.  In  listening  to  a  speech,  in  hearing 
a  remark,  or  in  reading  a  book  or  an  article,  he 
never  inquires  what  are  the  maker  or  author's  sen- 
timents or  opinions  on  cognate  cardinal  points. 
He  is  a  stranger  to  impulses  which  impel  us  to  seek 
Mr.  Darwin's  views  concerning  a  future  life  as  a 
preliminary  to  even  apprehending  the  principle  of 
natural  selection,  or  the  positive  credo  of  Carlyle 
before  enjoying  Carlyle's  destructive  criticism  of 
Coleridge.  As  to  any  important  object  of  mental 
apprehension,  therefore,  his  road  is  much  shorter 
and  his  arrival  much  quicker.  To  him,  at  any  rate, 
it  would  not  be  necessary  to  add  that  this  involves 
no  question  of  the  relative  worthiness  of  the  two 
ways  of  seeing  and  thinking. 

But  it  is  only  the  French  that  we  find  especially 
quick-witted,  and  generally  we  reach  France  via 
England  ;  and,  remembering  Thackeray's  definition 
of  humor  as  "  wit  and  love,"  we  are  apt  to  express 
one  difference  between  ourselves,  as  Anglo-Saxons, 
and  the  French  in  respect  of  intelligence  as  the  dif- 
ference between  humor  and  wit.  Such  a  distinc- 
tion is  flattering  to  us,  and  it  is  therefore  become 


110  FRENCH   TRAITS 

classic.  It  has,  however,  to  be  stretched  to  the 
utmost  of  its  elastic  extent  in  candid  hands  to  be 
made  to  apply  in  many  instances,  unless  by  the 
"love,"  which  to  make  humor  Thackeray  adds  to 
wit,  something  more  intense  than  geniality  and 
evident  kindliness  is  intended.  And  more  and 
more  this  is  seen  to  be  the  case.  Few  Anglo-Saxon 
critics  nowadays,  of  anything  like  Carlyle's  insight, 
for  example,  would  be  tempted  to  turn  an  essay  on 
Voltaire,  the  great  destroyer  of  the  old,  bad  order 
of  things,  into  a  sermon  on  persiflage.  To  many 
French  writers  it  would  be  impossible  to  deny  the 
possession  of  a  subtle  charm  qualifying  their  unmis- 
takable wit,  in  a  way  which  renders  it  very  cordial 
and  good-humored,  if  not  humorous.  Merely  "  wit- 
ty," in  our  sense  of  the  term,  they  certainly  are  not. 
They  have  an  indubitable  flavor  which  is,  if  not 
genial,  assuredly  kindly.  Where  can  even  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  laugh  as  he  can  at  a  French  theatre  ?  Mirth- 
provoking  qualities  will,  on  the  French  stage,  ex- 
cuse any  absui-dity.  "Say  what  you  like  ;  I  admit  it," 
M.  Francisque  Sarcey,  the  famous  "Temps  "  critic, 
repeats  a  hundred  times,  "  Mais,  c'est  si  amusant ; 
c'est  si  amusant !  "  An  American  would  so  speak  of 
negro-minstrelsy.  "  Witty  "  is  a  wretched  transla- 
tion of  spirituel.  To  be  spirituel  is  to  be  witty  in  a 
spiritual  way.  It  involves  the  active  interposition 
of  mind,  and  what  is  known  as  the  light  touch. 
Our  humor  does  not  depend  upon  lightness  of 
touch,  it  need  hardly  be  said.     A  genial  imagina- 


INTELLIGENCE  111 

tion  suffices  in  many  instances.  Often  this  need 
only  be  possessed  by  the  auditor  or  the  reader 
to  make  humor  successful.  Heartiness  on  one 
side,  and  good-will,  on  the  other,  go  far  toward 
creating  it  out  of  nothing  sometimes.  Nothing  will 
atone  for  the  lack  of  this  in  our  eyes  ;  nothing  will 
atone  for  the  lack  of  wit  in  French  eyes.  This  at 
least  it  is  fair  to  say.  A  Frenchman  would  find  Colo- 
nel Sellers  as  ennuyeax  as  Paris  found  Dundreary. 
An  Anglo-Saxon  finds  something  cynical  alloying 
the  mirth  of  such  a  master-piece  as  "Georges  Dan- 
din  ; "  we  cannot  comfortably  enjoy  the  ridicule  of 
misfortune  if  it  be  due  to  stupidity  rather  than  to 
moral  error.  The  French  attitude  is  the  exact  con- 
verse, and  the  fact  is  exceedingly  instructive. 

But  the  French  lack  of  sympathy  for  our  humor 
does  not  chiefly  spring  from  the  lack  of  this  ele- 
ment of  "  love  "  in  French  esprit,  for  which,  indeed, 
it  substitutes  a  fairly  satisfactory  geniality ;  nor 
does  it  proceed  altogether  from  impatience  with  the 
voulu  character  of  this  humor,  with  its  occasional 
heaviness  of  touch,  its  ceaseless  vigilance  for  oppor- 
tunities of  exercise,  its  predominance  of  high  spirits 
over  mental  alertness,  of  body  over  bouquet.  It  is 
in  the  main  due  to  French  dislike  of,  and  perplexity 
in  the  presence  of,  whatever  is  thoroughly  fantastic, 
unscrupulously  exaggerated,  wilfully  obscure.  To 
illustrate  this  distinction,  a  better  definition  of  hu- 
mor than  Thackeray's  is  quoted  by  his  daughter 
from  Miss  Anne  Evans,  who   describes   it  (wittily, 


112  FRENCH  TRAITS 

not  humorously)  as  "  Thinking  in  fun,  while  we  feel 
in  earnest."  Such  procedure  is  in  the  teeth  of 
French  habit  and  tradition — does  violence  to  every 
French  notion  of  right  feehng  and  thinking.  With 
them  thinking  corresponds  as  exactly  to  feeling  as 
talking  does  to  thinking.  This  is  not  at  all 
inconsistent  with  the  subtilest  suggestion,  intima- 
tion, and  even  a  certain  amount  of  superficial  indi- 
rectness. Suggestion,  nevertheless,  however  sub- 
tile, is  always  strictly  and  logically  inferrible  from 
the  statement  which  suggests  and  which  may  itself 
be  so  delicate  as  to  be  easily  missed.  And  however 
superficially  indirect  an  intimation  may  be,  it  is 
never  obscure.  But  we  look  for  the  serious  feel- 
ing beneath  the  fun  in  French  wit,  and  it  is  only  by 
long  practice  that  we  come  to  perceive  that  there 
is  none.  "  All  fables  have  their  morals,"  says  Thor- 
eau  somewhere,  "but  the  innocent  enjoy  the  story." 
In  any  department  of  comedy  the  French  are  bound 
to  seem  to  us  "  innocent  "  in  this  way.  An  Anglo- 
Saxon  reading  or  witnessing  Mohere,  and  inevitably 
associating  serious  feeling  with  all  merriment  of 
anything  hke  such  intellectual  eminence  as  Mo- 
li^re's,  is  sure  to  find  his  amusement  alloyed  with  a 
certain  dissatisfaction.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the 
presence  of  English  or  American  humor  the  French- 
man is  infallibly  at  fault.  He  is  accustomed  to  the 
classification  and  minute  division  of  a  Hterature 
highly  organized  and  elaborately  developed,  where 
wit  and  philosophy  have  each  its  province — as  dis- 


INTELLIGENCE  1 1 3 

tinctly  as  history  and  romance,  which  with  us  are 
so  frequently  (and  in  Macaulay's  view,  it  may  be 
remembered,  so  advantageously)  commingled.  In 
the  presence  of  that  portion  of  our  American  hu- 
mor which  is  vmaccompanied  by  any  "  feeling  in 
earnest,"  and  which  is  so  popular  in  England,  we 
may  perhaps  excuse  his  perplexity,  remembering  his 
partiality  for  lightness  of  touch. 

What  I  have  been  saying  is  merely  another  and  a 
striking  attestation  of  the  French  sense  for  propor- 
tion, order,  clearness.  French  wit,  like  everything 
else  in  French  character,  is  exercised  under  scien- 
tifically developed  conditions.  It  is  never  exagger- 
ated in  such  a  way  as  to  lose  its  strict  character  as 
wit.  "  Smiling  through  tears,"  after  the  fashion  of 
the  English  comic  muse,  is  little  characteristic  of 
her  French  cousin.  The  French  genius  for  measure 
dislikes  uncertainty  and  confusion  as  thoroughly 
as  Anglo-Saxon  exuberance  dislikes  being  labelled 
and  pigeon-holed.  Thus,  with  all  their  play  of 
mind,  the  French  seems  to  us  literal,  almost  terre-d- 
terre  at  times — their  play  of  mind  is  manifested 
within  such  clearly  defined  limits  and  exercised  on 
such  carefully  classified  subjects.  They,  in  turn, 
find  us  vague,  mystic,  fantastical.  Our  fondness 
for  viewing  things  in  chance  and  passing  lights 
they  share  in  no  degree  whatever.  What  they  know, 
they  possess.  For  bias,  however  brilliant,  or  im- 
perfect vision,  however  luminous,  they  have  a  native 
repugnance.  Therefore  we  find  them  frequently  defi- 
8 


114  FRENCH  TRAITS 

cient  in  imagination,  and  thus  even  lacking  in  their 
great  specialty  of  appreciation,  apprehension,  acute 
observation.  M.  Taine's  criticism  of  Carlyle,  for 
example,  appears  to  us  the  very  essence  of  misap- 
preciation.  M.  Taine  is  quite  blind  to  that  over- 
mastering side  of  Carlyle's  genius,  his  humor.  He 
takes  him  too  seriously,  and  not  seriously  enough  ; 
he  takes  him  literally.  At  once  we  say  to  ourselves, 
nothing  that  this  critic  can  say  of  Carlyle  can  have 
real  interest  and  value.  And  we  err  on  our  side  ; 
M.  Taine  can  help  us  to  see  how  necessary  Carlyle's 
genius  is  to  preserve  from  triviality,  from  merely 
passing  interest,  all  that  exaggeration  and  fantasti- 
cality which  are  just  as  characteristic  of  him  as  his 
genius  and  humor. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  in  virtue,  rather  than  in 
spite,  of  their  distaste  for  mysticism,  that  the  French 
display  such  a  rare  quality  for  dealing  vnih  subjects 
whose  native  realm  is  the  border-land  between  the 
positive  and  the  metaphysical.  Here  their  touch  is 
invariably  delicate  and  intuitively  just.  They  pre- 
fer the  positive  ;  they  deal  with  the  metaphysical 
positively,  or  not  at  all — witness  Pascal,  witness 
Descartes,  witness  the  deists  of  the  Encyclopjedia, 
witness  Michelet's  definition  of  metaphysics  as  "  I'art 
de  s'egarer  avec  methode."  But  they  show  immense 
tact,  which  can  only  come  from  highly  developed 
intelligence  unmixed  with  emotion,  in  treating  that 
entire  range  of  topics  the  truth  concerning  which 
seems  so  accessible  and  is  yet,  as  expeiience  and 


INTELLIGENCE  115 

candor  warn  us,  so  elusive — the  nebulae  lying,  as  it 
were,  within  the  penumbra  of  perception,  neither 
quite  outside  its  range  in  the  clear  light,  nor  wholly 
within  the  shadow  where  search  is  as  stimulating  to 
the  imagination  as  it  is  otherwise  barren.  The  field 
of  thought,  where  the  light  touch  is  the  magician's 
wand  that  opens  the  mind,  though  it  affords  little 
actual  sustenance,  and  that  fortifies  the  judgment  in 
keeping  it  within  bovmds  ;  where  plump  statements 
and  definite  opinions  are  out  of  place  ;  where  the 
logical  conclusion  is  divined  to  be  incomplete  and 
misleading ;  where  scores  of  practical  questions 
concerning  love,  marriage,  manners,  morals,  criti- 
cism are  to  be  discussed  without  dogmatism,  and 
the  clearest  view  of  them  is  seen  to  have  qualifica- 
tions— the  field,  in  fine,  of  airy  and  avowed  paradox, 
where  any  emotion  is  an  impertinence  and  any  hard 
and  fast  generalization  an  intrusion,  belongs  almost 
wholly  to  the  French.  This  field  they  never  mis- 
take for  the  positive.  They  are  no  more  uncon- 
sciously vague  here  than  in  the  positive  field.  They 
treat  fancifulness  fancifully.  They  preserve  all  their 
perspicacity  in  dealing  with  it.  Some  refinement 
of  the  intelligence  secures  them  against  the  imposi- 
tion of  illusion,  and  enables  them  to  enjoy  and  illus- 
trate its  art. 

The  passion  for  clearness  appears  nowhere  more 
manifest  than  in  the  French  language  itself,  the 
clearness  of  which  is  a  commonplace.  It  is  for  this 
reason,  rather  than  because  it  is  the  earliest  settled 


116  FRENCH   TRAITS 

European  idiom,  and  because  of  French  preponder- 
ance in  European  affairs,  that  it  is  the  language  of 
diplomacy.  It  is  impossible  to  be  at  once  correct 
and  obscure  in  French.  Expressed  in  French,  a 
proposition  cannot  be  ambiguous.  Any  given  col- 
location of  words  has  a  significance  that  is  certain. 
Permutation  of  words  means  a  change  of  ideas. 
Spanish  may  have  more  rhetorical  variety  ;  English 
a  choice  between  poetic  and  prose  phraseology ; 
German  may  state  or,  rather,  "  shadow  forth  "  more 
profundity;  Italian  be  "richer,"  as  the  Italians, 
who  find  themselves  constrained  in  French,  are  al- 
ways saying ;  the  synthetic  languages  may  express 
more  concisely  certain  nuances  of  thought  and  feel- 
ing. None  of  them  is  so  precise  as  the  French. 
And  this  is  far  from  being  felt  as  a  defect  by  the 
French  themselves.  One  of  Victor  Hugo's  chief 
titles  to  fame  is  his  accomplishment  in  moulding 
the  French  language  to  his  thought,  in  developing 
its  elasticity  by  making  it  say  new  things.  This  is 
indeed,  perhaps,  the  only  one  of  his  accomplish- 
ments that  may  be  called  unique.  It  is  universally 
ascribed  by  Frenchmen  to  the  miracle  of  Hugo's 
genius.  Except  Gautier,  the  other  romanticists, 
even,  whatever  violence  they  did  to  traditions  of 
propriety,  worked  with  the  old,  time-honored  tools. 
Alfred  de  Musset  and  Keats  are  often  compared. 
They  have  indeed  many  traits  in  common.  English 
stylists,  admitting  at  once  with  Mr.  Lowell  that 
Keats  is  "  overlanguaged,"  nevertheless  do  not  hesi- 


INTELLIGENCE  117 

tate  to  find  in  his  luxuriant  freedom,  and  even  his 
license  of  tropical  intensity,  one  of  his  most  distin- 
guished merits.  In  Musset's  case  a  French  critic, 
who  "  hesitates  less  and  less,"  he  says,  to  term  Mus- 
set  the  greatest  of  French  poets,  is  specially  im- 
pressed by  the  correctness,  the  propriety,  of  Mus- 
set's diction,  the  grace  and  power  which  he  exhibits 
within  the  lines  of  conventional  grammar.  Boileau 
could  reproach  him  with  nothing.  His  past  defin- 
ites — where  Eacine  himself  is  weak — are  all  right. 
In  other  words,  his  precision  is  faultless ;  and 
whereas  this  would  be  nothing  in  a  mere  gramma- 
rian, in  a  poet  of  Musset's  spiritual  quality  it  is 
deemed  a  merit  simply  transcendent — so  easy  is  it 
to  give  the  reins  to  one's  afflatus,  and  so  be  hurried 
beyond  the  limits  of  that  perfection  of  style  which, 
whatever  else  may  be  present,  is  absolutely  essential 
to  the  truest  distinction.  One  sees  at  once  how  dif- 
ferent the  point  of  view  is  from  our  own.  One  ap- 
preciates how  the  French  language  itself,  with  such 
an  ideal  as  this,  conduces  to  the  measure  of  the 
French  temperament,  the  clearness  of  the  French 
mind. 

"La  Raison,"  says  Voltaire,  "n'est  pas  prolixe." 
And  whether  or  no  the  literature  in  which  this 
admirably  clear  language  is  embodied  be  as  impor- 
tant to  mankind  as  other  modern  literatures,  the 
most  superficial  study  of  it  reveals  the  source  of  that 
terseness,  for  which  it  is  known,  even  of  the  ignorant, 
to  be  remarkable,  in  its  devotion  to  the  qualities  of 


118  FRENCH   TRAITS 

the  intelligence  rather  than  to  those  of  the  imagina* 
tion.  Inspired  by  and  appealing  to  the  intelligence 
more  exclusively  than  any  other  Uterature,  it  rarely 
sins  by  elaborateness,  which  is  due  to  the  dross  of 
thought,  or  by  an  abruptness  and  inelegance  whose 
conciseness  is  by  no  means  inconsistent  with  obscur- 
ity. It  is  thus  f uU  without  being  fragmentary.  In- 
elasticity of  form  is  not  a  concomitant  of  its  conden- 
sation of  substance.  It  is  neither  vague  in  idea  nor 
ejaculatory  in  expression.  Bom  a  Frenchman,  Emer- 
son, who  would  surely  lose  no  essential  conciseness 
in  a  larger  sweep  and  freer  flow  of  phrase,  would 
have  been  as  great  a  writer  as  he  is  a  thinker.  As 
for  that  fulness  which  is  rather  over-explicit  than 
fragmentary,  and  which  is  indeed  rather  thinness 
than  fulness,  which  in  every  relation  but  that  of 
teacher  and  pupil  is  so  relentlessly  fatiguing,  and  of 
which  we  enjoy  a  surfeit  in  pulpit,  platform,  press, 
periodical,  and  private  conversation,  it  simply  does 
not  exist  in  France.  Such  analogues  of  it  as  do  exist 
are  rewarded  with  the  esteem  in  which  all  bores  are 
held  in  a  country  whose  nightmare  is  ennui.  Noth- 
ing says  more  for  French  intelhgence.  Nothing  says 
more  for  our  own  preference  of  instruction  to  intelli- 
gence than  the  opposite  attitude  on  our  part,  which 
prompts  the  acceptance  of  much  that  is  stale  and  flat 
in  the  hope  that  somehow  it  may  be  found  not 
wholly  unprofitable. 

And  French  definiteness,  like  any  other  illustra- 
tion of  rounded  and  complete  perfection,  has  great 


INTELLIGENCE  119 

charm  for  persons  of  a  quite  different  temperament 
and  training.  Take  as  an  instance,  among  the  mul- 
titude it  would  be  easy  to  cite,  the  conspicuous  one 
of  so  thorough  an  Englishman  as  Mr.  John  Morley 
in  his  character  of  publicist  and  critic.  The  direct 
influence  of  French  Encyclopsedism  upon  European 
thought  has  perhaps  ceased  to  be  powerful ;  but  as 
one  of  the  chief  lights  of  that  English  school  whose 
performance  is  probably  mainly  responsible  for  the 
late  Karl  Hillebrand's  opinion  that  the  English  at 
present  enjoy  the  intellectual  supremacy  in  Europe, 
Mr.  John  Morley  is  an  interesting  illustration  of  the 
indirect  influence  which  the  methods  and  mental 
habits  of  French  rationalism  still  exert.  Spite  of  a 
thoroughly  English  temperament  and  training,  Mr. 
John  Morley 's  study  of  the  French  rationalistic 
epoch,  upon  which  he  is  the  authority  in  English, 
induces  him  to  find  it  "  a  really  singular  trait "  in 
Burke  that  "  to  him  there  actually  was  an  element 
of  mystery  in  the  cohesion  of  men  in  societies,  in 
political  obedience,  in  the  sanctity  of  contract.'' 
This  is  certainly  a  striking  instance  of  the  potency 
of  the  French  influence  in  favor  of  clearness.  But 
we  have  all  felt  its  power  and  the  exhilaration  which 
comes  from  submitting  to  it — all  of  us  who  have  come 
in  contact  with  it.  There  is  something  stimulating 
to  the  faculties  in  withdrawing  them  from  exercise 
in  the  twilight  of  mysticism  and  setting  them  in 
motion  in  the  clear  day,  and,  to  cite  Mr.  Morley  again, 
upon  "  matter  which  is  not  known  at  all  unless  it  is 


120  FRENCH  TRAITS 

known  distinctly."  About  many  things  and  in  many 
ways  a  man  fond  of  France  and  French  traits  easily 
gets  into  the  same  mode  of  thinking.  Yet  there  is 
hardly  anything  less  characteristic  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  genius  than  this  purely  rationaUstic  habit  of 
mind.  We  are,  as  a  rule,  a  thousand  times  nearer 
to  Burke  than  to  his  critic  in  native  sympathy,  and 
the  idea  that  there  is  actually  an  element  of  mystery 
in  the  cohesion  of  men  in  societies  seems  far  from 
singular  to  ua  We  not  only  have  a  tendency  toward 
the  mysticism  so  foreign  to  the  French  mind  and 
temper,  but  we  maintain  as  a  distinctly  held  tenet 
the  wisdom  of  taking  account  of  the  unaccountable, 
and  find  French  completeness  incomplete  in  this,  to 
our  notion,  vitally  important  regard.  But  it  would 
be  difficult  to  convince  a  Frenchman  of  this  wisdom. 
The  rationality  of  considering  only  those  phenomena 
of  which  the  origin  and  laws  are  discoverable,  of 
eliminating  the  element  of  confusion  introduced  in- 
to every  discussion  by  taking,  with  Wordsworth, 
"blank  misgivings"  for  "the  fountain-light  of  all 
our  day,"  accords  with  his  notion  of  wisdom  far  more 
closely.  Cardinal  Newman's  remark,  which  we  find 
so  happy,  to  the  effect  that  after  you  have  once  de- 
fined your  terms,  and  cleared  your  ground,  all 
argument  is  either  needless  or  useless,  seems  to  him 
curiously  amiss.  Then,  he  thinks,  is  the  very  time 
for  argument,  when  the  terms  have  been  defined 
and  the  ground  cleared,  so  that  candor  and  clair- 
voyance may  without  obstruction  be  brought  to  bear 


INTELLIGENCE  121 

upon  those  natural  or  social  phenomena  which  will 
always  seem  different  to  different  minds  until,  in  this 
way,  the  science  of  them  is  attained.  "But  you  are 
not  in  search  of  the  science  of  things,  you  others," 
he  adds  ;  "  in  virtue  of  your  turn  for  poetry  and 
your  love  of  mysticism  you  are,  as  your  Wordsworth 
says,  '  creatures  moving  about  in  worlds  not  realized,' 
where  argument  is  either  useless  or  needless ;  and 
when  you  do  descend  to  the  practical  and  the  ac- 
tual your  mysticism  accompanies  you  even  into  this 
realm  ;  and  even  in  occupying  yourselves  with  so 
actual  and  practical  a  matter  as  social  and  political 
reform  you  refuse,  with  your  Burke,  to  consider 
man's  nature  except  as  '  modified  by  his  habits,' 
which,  in  your  fancy,  have  some  mysterious  sanction. 
You  wonder  that  we  know  so  little  of  your  greatest 
modern  poet  and  your  greatest  publicist.  In  literal 
truth  they  can  be  of  no  service  to  us.  They  are  too 
irrational  themselves,  and  they  are  too  contemptuous 
of  merely  rational  forces."  There  is  indeed  little  in 
either  Burke  or  Wordsworth  to  appeal  to  the  French 
mind,  and  the  fact  itself  is  as  significant  as  a  chapter 
of  analysis. 

Let  us  not  take  Burke  or  Wordsworth  as  witness 
of  the  insufficiency  of  the  human  intelligence,  how- 
ever. Let  us  take  the  clairvoyant  Frenchman  him- 
self, and  let  us  select  two  such  wholly  different  wit- 
nesses as  the  late  Ximenes  Doudan  and  M.  Taine — 
the  sympathetic  and  the  scientific  critic,  the  esprit 
delicat  and  the  incisive  and  erudite  scholar.     They 


122  FRENCH  TRAITS 

are  quite  in  accord.  "  We  cannot  get  along  without 
vague  ideas,  and  an  able  man  who  has  only  clear 
ideas  is  a  fool  who  will  never  discover  anything," 
says  M.  Doudan.  "  When  the  Frenchman  conceives 
an  object,"  says  M.  Taine,  "  he  conceives  it  quickly 
and  distinctly,  but  he  does  not  perceive  it  as  it  really 
is,  complex  and  entire.  He  sees  portions  of  it  only, 
and  his  perception  of  it  is  discursive  and  superficiaL" 
Thus,  even  in  the  sphere  of  the  intelligence,  we  find 
that  discovery  and  perception  are  not  always,  even 
in  French  eyes,  the  fruits  of  French  clairvoyance. 
Nevertheless,  nothing  is  more  idly  self-indulgent  for 
us  whose  defects  lie  in  quite  other  directions  than  to 
dwell  on  the  defect  of  the  French  quality  of  clear- 
ness ;  the  French  criticisms  of  clearness  themselves, 
while  they  illustrate  the  quality  in  being  made  at  all, 
and  thus  triumphing  over  prejudice,  may  be  said  to 
illustrate  also  its  defect  in  being  a  little  too  simple 
and  definite.  Truth  never  shows  herself  to  mortals 
except  by  glimpses  ;  concentration  and  intensity  of 
attention  at  these  moments  tend  to  create  forgetful- 
ness  of  their  number  and  variety — that  is,  perhaps, 
an  we  can  truthfully  say.  It  may  be  impossible  to 
be  clear  without  being  limited,  but  it  is  entirely 
possible  to  be  limited  without  being  clear.  Limita- 
tion belongs  rather  to  the  conscious  exclusion  of 
essentially  vague  topics  ;  clearness,  to  the  uncon- 
scious operation  of  the  spirit  of  order  and  system. 
"Clearness,"  says  M.  Doudan  himself,  "not  only 
helps  us   to  make   ourselves  understood  ;  it  serves 


INTELLIGENCE  123 

also  as  a  demonstration  to  ourselves  that  we  are  not 
being  led  astray  by  confused  conceptions."  "When 
we  consider  much  of  our  over-subtle  writing,  two 
things  are  plain — first  that  there  is  an  unintelligent 
awkwardness  of  expression,  and,  second,  that  there 
is  an  unintelligent  confusion  of  ideas.  Reduced  to 
coherence,  the  meaning  is  often  discovered  to  be 
very  simple.  And  the  meaning  is,  after  all,  what  is 
significant.  Yet  the  emotion  associated  with  its 
discovery  has  so  heated  and  fused  a  fancied  new 
truth  that  it  is  distorted  to  the  writer's  own  view, 
and  he  sees  it  far  larger  than  it  is — he  sees  it  unin- 
telligently.  French  writing  is  so  different  from  ours 
in  this  regard — it  is  such  easy  reading,  in  a  word — 
that,  recalling  Sheridan's  "  mot,"  we  are  forced  to 
perceive  that  it  may  have  been  hard  writing,  after 
all,  instead  of  merely  due  to  limited  vision.  About, 
in  his  "  Alsace,"  prettily  reminds  Sarcey  of  a  time 
when  he  had  not  "le  travail  facile,  I'esprit  rapide,  et 
la  main  sHre  comme  aujourd'hui."  M.  Sarcey's  style 
is  limpidity  itself ;  and  when  we  consider  what  ideas, 
what  nuances,  what  infinite  delicacy,  are  disguised  in 
this  limpidity,  and  in  that  of  others  comparable  to 
it,  we  can  see  that  French  clearness  by  no  means 
necessarily  means  limitation,  but  implies  a  prodigi- 
ous amount  of  work  done,  of  rubbish  cleared  away,  a 
long  journey  of  groping  victoriously  concluded,  and 
the  slough  in  which  our  over-subtlety  is  still  strug- 
gling left  far  behind.  Clearness!  Do  we  not  all 
know  what  a  badge  of  intelligence  it  is  ;  how  wearily 


124  FRENCH  TBAITS 

we  strive  to  attain  it ;  how  depressingly  we  fail ;  how, 
when  we  succeed,  we  feel  a  consciousness  of  triumph 
and  of  power  ?  Admit  its  Umitations.  The  French 
apotheosis  of  intellect  has  its  weak  side.  But  it 
argues  an  ideal  that  is  immensely  attractive  because 
it  is  perfectly  distinct. 


IV 
SENSE  AND  SENTIMENT 


SENSE  AND  SENTIMENT 

So  that  "after  all,"  as  M.  Taine  says,  "in  France 
the  chief  power  is  intellect,"  More  specifically, 
however,  one  is  tempted  to  add,  it  is  good-sense. 
Good-sense  is  universal.  There  is  no  national  trait 
more  salient  in  every  individual.  One  comprehends 
Franklin's  French  popularity  ;  his  incarnation  of 
good-sense  inevitably  suggested  to  the  Parisians  the 
propriety  of  divine  honors.  Measure  is  a  French 
passion.  Excess,  even  of  virtue,  is  distinctly  disa- 
greeable to  the  French  nature.  Philinte's  line  in 
"  Le  Misanthrope," 

"  Et  veut  que  Ion  soit  sage  aveo sobriety," 

defines  the  national  feeling  in  this  regard  with  pre- 
cision. Exaggeration,  exaltation,  the  fanatic  spirit, 
are  extremely  rare.  Temperance  is  the  almost  uni- 
versal rule  in  speech,  demeanor,  taste,  and  habits. 
Nothing  is  less  French  than  eccentricity.  The  nor- 
mal attitude  is  equipoise.  Any  shock  to  this  French- 
men instinctively  dislike.  The  unknown  has  few 
attractions  for  them.  The  positive  and  systematic 
ordering  of  the  known  absorbs  their  attention. 
Their  gayety  itself  is  consciously  hygienic.     Pleasure 


128  FRENCH  TRAITS 

is  their  constant  occupation  mainly  because  they 
can  extract  it  out  of  everything,  and  make  it  such 
an  avowed  motive.  But  that  intensification  of  pleas- 
ure which,  either  by  attaining  joy  and  bliss,  on  the 
one  hand,  or  degenerating  into  riot,  on  the  other, 
involves  a  complete  surrender  of  one's  self  to  im- 
pulse, they  rarely  experience.  They  organize  their 
amusement,  and  take  it  deliberately.  They  cultivate 
carefully  a  capacity  for  enjoyment.  They  strike  ua 
as,  one  and  all,  calculators  They  leave  nothing  to 
chance,  and  trust  the  unforeseen  so  little  that  the 
unexpected  disconcerts  them.  They  are  alert  rather 
than  spontaneous.  To  our  recklessness  they  appear 
to  coddle  themselves,  but  we  speedily  discern  that 
in  nothing  is  their  good-sense  more  salutary  ;  they 
conceive  hygiene  as  we  do  therapeutics.  Similarly 
with  their  economy,  which  is  conspicuous  and  all- 
pervading.  If  you  are  bent  on  pleasure,  a  frugal 
mind  is  a  necessity.  Frugality  is  noticeable  every- 
where. It  is  the  source  of  the  self-respect  of  the 
poor  ;  it  keeps  Paris  purged  of  slums  ;  it  decorates 
respectability,  and  sobers  wealth  ;  it  enables  the 
entire  community  to  get  the  utmost  out  of  life. 
Economy  extends  even  into  the  manner  of  eating. 
Les  Americains  gdchent  tout  is  a  frequent  French  re- 
flection upon  our  neglect  of  the  gravy  and  lack  of 
thoroughness  in  the  matter  of  mutton-chops.  With 
them  good-sense  triumphs  over  grace  itself.  In  dress, 
economy  is  as  common  as  sobriety  of  taste.  French- 
women would  no  more  pay  for,  than  they  would 


SENSE  AND   SENTIMENT  129 

wear,  our  dresses.  Frenchmen  make  the  opera- 
hat  do  duty  in  the  afternoon  promenade,  and 
would  resent  the  rigor  of  our  "  spring  and  fall 
styles." 

This  wide-spread  diffusion  of  good-sense  has,  how- 
ever, one  inevitable  concomitant — namely,  a  corre- 
sponding deficiency  of  sentiment.  So  preponderant 
is  rationality  in  the  French  natvu-e  that  Frenchmen 
strike  us,  sometimes,  as  a  curious  compound  of  the 
Quaker  and  the  Hebrew.  We  are  used  to  less  alert- 
ness, to  more  relaxation.  Bathos,  enervation  are 
foreign  to  their  atmosphere,  and  are  speedily  trans- 
formed amid  its  bracing  breezes.  But  it  is  impos- 
sible to  be  so  completely  unsentimental  as  the 
French  are  without  missing  some  of  the  quality  of 
which  sentimentality  is  really  but  the  excess.  The 
perfume  of  this  they  certainly  miss.  There  are 
characters  in  Anglo-Saxondom — not  to  seek  the  Ge- 
milthlichkeit  of  Germany — that  are  completely  pene- 
trated with  this  fine  aroma.  Neither  are  they  rare  ; 
every  man's  acquaintance  includes  such.  Their  lives 
are  full  of  a  sweet,  indefinable  charm.  Whatever 
the  exterior,  and  often  it  is  rugged  and  forbidding, 
the  real  nature  within  glows  with  a  delightful  and 
temperate  fervor  that  irradiates  everywhere  the 
circle  in  which  they  exist  and  move.  Whatever,  in- 
deed, the  intellectual  fibre  or  equipment,  the  "  mel- 
low fruitfulness "  of  disposition  and  demeanor  is 
potently  seductive.  Still  further,  one  may  find  the 
quality  in  question  illuminating  and  rendering 
9 


130  FRENCH  TRAITS 

subtly  attractive  most  deviously  tortuous  moral  im- 
perfections. And  in  France  this  quality  hardly 
exists.  In  very  few  varieties  of  French  type  is  it  to 
be  found,  even  in  dilution.  Even  then  it  is  apt  to  be 
imported.  Kousseau  was  Swiss,  and  his  heart  and 
imagination  had  been  touched  by  the  deep  colors 
and  mysterious  spaces  of  the  Jura  with  a  magic 
which  it  is  vain  to  seek  under  the  gray  skies  of 
Northern,  or  amid  the  "  sunburnt  mirth,"  the  "dance 
and  Provenpal  song,"  of  Southern  Gaul.  Passion- 
ately patriotic  as  was  the  chief  of  Rousseau's  succes- 
sors, it  is  imdoubtedly  to  her  Northern  blood  that 
she  owes  her  sentiment.  About  her  French  side, 
the  side  which  came  to  the  surface  chiefly  in  her  life, 
as  the  other  did  in  her  books,  there  was,  if  we  may 
believe  M.  Paul  de  Musset  and  other  chroniqueurs, 
very  little  sentiment  indeed.  In  any  event  it  is  an 
exception,  and  not  a  type,  that  George  Sand  illus- 
trates as  a  Frenchwoman.  Her  great  contemporary, 
Balzac,  remarkable  and  original  as  he  was,  is  a 
thousand  times  more  French.  But  it  is  idle  to  cite 
instances.  After  all  one  may  say  of  the  De  Guerins, 
of  Senancour,  of  Joubert,  Doudan,  Eenan,  the  fact 
remains  that  the  French  one  meets,  the  people  we 
mean  when  we  think  of  Frenchmen,  the  great  mass 
of  the  nation  and  its  characteristic  racial  types,  strike 
our  Anglo-Saxon  sense  too  sharply  and  clearly,  with 
too  ringing  and  vibrant  a  note,  to  appear  to  us  oth- 
erwise than  distinctly,  integrally,  and  ineradicably 
unsentimental     It  is  this  principally,  I  think,  which 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  131 

makes  the  Anglo-Saxon  feel  so  little  at  home  in 
France — that  is  to  say,  the  Anglo-Saxon  who  does 
thus  feel,  and  who,  I  suspect,  is  in  the  majority, 
Paris  is  certainly  very  agreeable.  Americans  espe- 
cially, having  none  of  the  jealousy  of  French  institu- 
tions which  makes  a  Tory  of  the  most  liberal  Eng- 
lishman while  he  is  in  Paris,  find  all  sorts  of  agre- 
ments  there  as  well  as  en  province.  But  it  is  noto- 
rious that  of  both  those  who  merely  make  flying 
visits,  and  those  who  form  the  American  colony  and 
move  about  in  its  rather  narrow  circle',  there  are 
very  few  who  come  into  close  contact  with  French- 
men or  make  acquaintances  of  any  degree  of  intimacy 
among  them.  And  both  to  the  few  who  do  and  to 
the  many  who  do  not  come  to  know  them  well,  I 
suppose  that  French  people  are  not,  in  general, 
a,cutely  sympathetic. 

The  reason  is  not  the  difference  in  manners  or  in 
morals.  Italian  mceurs  are  as  unlike  American  as 
are  French  habits  and  character.  There  are  a  dozen 
points  of  reciprocity  between  Frenchmen  and  our- 
selves which  do  not  exist  between  us  and  the  rest  of 
the  Latin  race.  Indeed,  from  our  excessively  in- 
dustrial point  of  view,  it  seems  as  if  it  were  only 
since  1870  that  the  Italians  had  belonged  to  the 
modern  world  at  all — that  world  of  which,  from  the 
same  point  of  view,  we  are  the  present  light  and 
the  future  hope.  Yet  I  do  not  doubt  that  nine  out 
of  every  ten  travelling  Americans  find  the  Italians 
more  sympathetic,   and  that  those  who  cross  the 


132  FRENCH  TRAITS 

Pyrenees  get  a  more  cordial  feeling  for  the  Span- 
iarda  The  reason  is  that  the  moral  atmosphere 
south  of  the  Pyrenees  and  the  Alps  is  saturated 
with  sentiment.  As,  journeying  northward,  one 
passes  into  the  vine-clad  prairie  of  Languedoc,  or 
into  the  rose-decked  arbor  of  Provence,  one  ex- 
changes the  deep  Iberian  tone  and  intense  color, 
and  the  soft  sweetness  and  suave  grace  which  but 
gather  substance  without  changing  character  in 
their  crescendo  from  Naples  to  Turin,  for  a  flood  of 
bright  light  and  clear  freshness  that  fall  somewhat 
chill  on  American  relaxation.  One  exchanges  the 
air  of  sentimental  expansion  for  that  of  mental  ex- 
hilaration, and  only  when  some  definite  work  is  to 
be  done  do  we,  in  general,  enjoy  external  bracing 
of  this  sort.  And  in  France,  where  industry,  sobri- 
ety, measure,  good-sense,  hold  remorselessly  unre- 
mittent  sway,  where  the  chronic  state  of  mind  seems 
to  him  keyed  up  to  the  emergency  standard,  where 
no  one  is  idle  in  Lamb's  sense,  where  day-dreams 
are  unknown  and  pleasure  is  an  action  rather  than 
a  state,  where  "  merely  to  bask  and  ripen  "  is  rarely 
*'  the  student's  vnser  business  " — where,  in  a  word, 
everything  in  the  moral  sphere  appears  terribly 
dynamic,  the  American  inevitably  feels  himself 
somewhat  at  sea. 

We  have,  of  course,  our  unsentimental  man,  but 
he  differs  essentially  from  the  Frenchman  He  is 
practical,  pragmatical — his  enemies  are  inclined  to 
add,  Pharisaical.    To  any  one  of  a  radically  different 


SENSE  AND   SENTIMENT  133 

intellectual  outfit  he  is  intensely  unsympathetic.  He 
constantly  expresses  or  betrays  scorn  for  sentiment, 
which  he  associates  with  weakness  of  character  ;  and 
for  weakness  of  character  he  has  nothing  but  con- 
tempt. Yet  it  is  plain  that  he  has,  at  bottom,  more 
sentiment  than  the  most  sentimental  Frenchman. 
His  contempt  for  sentimentality,  in  fact,  is  thor- 
oughly sentimental,  and  due  to  an  instinctive  dread 
of  cheapening  a  force  and  a  consolation  which  he  se- 
cretly cherishes  and  jealously  guards.  And  the  con- 
trast is  as  marked  among  the  vicious  as  among  the 
virtuous  or  along  the  commonplace  level  of  respec- 
table merit  The  well-known  association  of  Thack- 
eray's Rebecca  with  Balzac's  Valerie  Marneflfe,  by 
which  M.  Taine  illustrates  radical  differences  in  the 
art  of  the  respective  authors,  serves  better  still,  to 
my  sense,  to  mark  the  radical  difference  in  respect  of 
sentiment  between  the  French  and  English  variants 
of  the  same  type.  Madame  Marneffe  is  far  less  com- 
plex, far  colder,  more  deliberately  designing,  more 
cynical,  less  remorseful.  She  is  cleverer  and  infi- 
nitely more  charming,  to  be  sure,  but  the  charm  is 
wholly  external.  Rebecca's  perversion  is  deeper, 
because  her  nature  is  more  emotional.  She  is  a  hyp- 
ocrite in  a  sense  and  to  a  degree  that  would  undoubt- 
edly surprise  Madame  Marneffe,  about  whom  there 
is  no  cant  at  all.  Her  circumstances  develop  none. 
Her  victims  succumbed  to  other  weapons.  The  ab- 
sence of  cant  is  itself  unfavorable  to  sentiment,  from 
which,  at  all  events,  cant  is  inseparable — an  invari- 


134  FRENCH   TRAITS 

able  excrescence,  if  not  in  one  form  or  another  and 
to  some  degree  a  more  integral  accompaniment.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  social  naturalist  infers  it  where 
sentiment  is  found  in  luxuriant  growth,  and  from  its 
absence  argues  the  certain  presence  of  cynicism. 
No  two  things  are  more  reciprocally  hostile  than  cyn- 
icism and  cant,  unless  it  be  cynicism  and  sentiment. 
We  come  logically,  thus,  to  find  the  absence  of  senti- 
ment, involved  in  the  French  freedom  from  cant, 
express  itself  in  what  strikes  the  Anglo-Saxon  as 
positive  cynicism.  Examples  are  abundant  in  con- 
temporary literature.  The  Parisian  widow  of  his 
"  Four  Meetings, " — one  of  Mr.  Henry  James's  mas- 
terpieces, and  designated  by  him,  with  mahcious  fe- 
licity, "quelque  chose  de  la  vieille  Europe" — sur- 
passes Madame  Marneffe ;  but  easily  the  mistress  of 
both,  and  here  a  marvel  of  pertinence,  is  the  inimit- 
able, the  irresistible  Madame  Cardinal. 

"  Who  has  not  the  inestimable  advantage,"  says 
Thackeray,  "  of  possessing  a  Mrs.  Nickleby  in  his  own 
family  ?  "  Morals  apart,  what  French  family,  one  may 
inquire  in  a  similarly  loose  and  approximate  spirit, 
cannot  boast  at  least  a  distant  connection  with  Ma- 
dame Cardinal.  This  creation  of  M  Ludovic  Halevy 
merits  the  high  praise  of  association  with  IVIrs.  Nick- 
leby. Morals  apart,  she  is  quite  as  frequent  a  French 
type  as  Mrs.  Nickleby  is  an  Anglo-Saxon  one  ;  and 
it  is  to  be  remarked  that  she  is  as  unmixed  an  em- 
bodiment of  sense  as  Mrs.  Nickleby  is  of  sensibility. 
There  is  a  side  of  French  nature,  and  of  French  na- 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  135 

ture  alone,  which  Madame  Cardinal  illustrates  in  an 
eminent  degree  and  with  a  desinvoUure  that  is  de- 
lightfully indiscreet.  In  his  Academy  address  of 
welcome  to  M.  Halevy,  M.  Pailleron  spoke  with 
sternness  of  the  Cardinal  menage,  and  praised  its 
chronicler  as  a  moralist.  But  for  a  foreigner  the 
moral  is  evident  enough  without  insistence  upon  it, 
and  the  point  of  her  portrait — aside  from  its  exqui- 
site technic — is  not  that  Madame  Cardinal  is  deeply 
perverted,  but  that  she  is  national.  She  is  national 
to  this  extent,  that  in  the  vast  majority  of  her  com- 
patriots who  are,  in  correctness  of  conduct  and  re- 
spectability of  position,  wholly  removed  from  her 
sphere,  who  are  as  worthy  as  she  is  scandalous, 
there  is,  nevertheless,  something  acutely  sympathet- 
ic with  that  trait  of  her  character  in  virtue  of  which 
her  rationality  infallibly  triumphs  over  the  subtlest 
attacks  of  sentiment.  Strictly  from  the  point  of 
view  of  sentiment,  we  may  say,  I  think,  that  the  aver- 
age Frenchman  makes  the  same  impression  on  us 
that  she  probably  makes  on  the  average  Frenchman. 
Be  the  situation  never  so  sentimental,  it  never 
overpowers  her  omnipresent  good-sense.  La  santo 
avant  tout  is  not  only  her  watchword,  but  that  of 
millions  of  her  countrymen.  It  is  as  potent  to  con- 
jure with  as  the  Marseillaise — and  in  the  same  way ; 
one  would  say  it  aroused  the  same  kind  of  feeling. 
The  famous  scene  at  table  on  Good-Friday,  when 
Madame  Cardinal  takes  a  hand  in  the  conversation, 
and  brings   the  most  delicate  and  elusive   topics 


136  FRENCH   TRAITS 

into  the  cold,  relentless  light  of  reason,  is  exquisite 
comedy,  but  it  is  satire  as  well.  This  brief  two 
pages  of  genre  will  live  as  long  as  any  masterpiece 
of  the  kind  in  literature,  but  its  interest  is  not 
merely  artistic.  It  is  a  contemporary  national 
document  of  the  first-class,  beside  which  M.  Zola's 
are  often  trite  and  superficial  There  are  present 
M,  and  Madame  Cardinal,  their  two  daughters, 
both  danseuses  at  the  Opera,  and  the  Italian  mar- 
quis, who  has  a  wife  and  children  in  Italy,  but  who 
prefers  living  with  the  elder  Mademoiselle  Cardinal 
in  Paris — an  arrangement  secured  by  the  maternal 
solicitude  of  Madame  Cardinal  herself.  Frequent 
quarrels  disturb  the  serenity  of  this  interior,  how- 
ever, despite  the  exclusively  practical  and  unsen- 
timental origin  of  the  relationship.  The  marquis 
is  reactionary.  M.  Cardinal  is  radical.  The  oc- 
casion of  Good-Friday  provokes  a  clerical  discus- 
sion. M.  Cardinal  abuses  priests.  The  marquis 
forbids  him  to  speak  ill  of  his  reUgion,  announcing 
that  he  is  a  Catholic  and  has  two  bishops  in  his 
family.  "Tenez,"  breaks  in  Madame  Cardinal, 
"  vous  nous  faites  pitie  avec  votre  religion  !  Ayez 
done  de  la  morale  avant  d'avoir  de  la  religion. 
.  .  .  Comment,  voila  un  homme  marie,  qui  a  une 
femme,  trois  enfants,  qui  laisse  tout  ya  vegeter  en 
Italic  pour  venir  vivre  i  Paris  avec  une  danseuse. 
Et  puis  il  parle  de  ses  sentiments  religieux.  Non, 
vrai !  5a  me  coupe  I'appetit ; " — "  See  here,  you  make 
us  perfectly  sick  with  your  religion !      Get  some 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  137 

morality  before  having  so  raucli  religion.  .  .  . 
What !  a  married  man  with  a  wife  and  three  chil- 
dren who  lets  all  that  vegetate  in  Italy,  while  he 
himself  comes  to  Paris  to  live  with  an  opera-dancer. 
And  he  talks  about  his  religious  sentiments  !  It 
spoils  my  appetite."  Sentimentally  speaking,  this 
has  the  sublime  irrelevance  of  Mrs.  Nickleby's  com- 
mon-sense. Otherwise  considered,  it  is  the  veiy 
acme  of  sense,  reached  under  what,  to  anyone  but 
Madame  Cardinal,  would  be  extremely  discouraging 
conditions.  How  great  must  be  the  tension  and 
how  constant  the  alertness  in  which  it  is  necessary 
to  keep  the  purely  intellectual  faculties  in  order  not 
to  be  distracted  from  impulsively  denouncing  in 
another  the  contemptible  conduct  for  which  you 
have  rendered  yourself  expressly  responsible  by  far 
greater  baseness.  In  what  a  pitiful  light  does  the 
sentimental  marquis  appear  beside  this  victorious 
imperviousness  to  the  sophisms  of  mere  delicatesse  ! 
His  exculpatory  talk  about  his  wife's  wrongs  toward 
him  takes  away  our  appetite  as  well  as  that  of  Ma- 
dame Cardinal.  As  Perichole  says,  "  Oui,  bonnes 
gens,  sautez  dessus ; "  he  is,  in  efifect,  "  par  trop 
bete." 

It  is,  indeed,  very  noticeable  that  the  social  cir- 
cumstances responsible  for  the  evolution  of  such 
creatures  as  the  Cardinals  should  have  succeeded  in 
debasing  merely  the  emotional  side  of  their  nature. 
The  will  is  not  enervated,  the  conscience  is  doubt- 
less readjusted  rather  than  repudiated  altogether, 


138  FRENCH  TRAITS 

and  the  mental  faculties  are,  to  a  perfectly  sane  sense, 
perhaps,  abnormally  developed.  No  one  would 
think  of  calling  Madame  Cardinal  btte.  She  has  the 
whole  jargon  of  sentimentahty  at  her  tongue's  end, 
and  makes  artistic  use  of  it.  The  effect  is  somewhat 
hard  and  brassy  ;  but  j  ustness  of  tone  in  such  mat- 
ters is  for  people  of  Madame  Cardinal's  station  an 
affair  of  the  susceptibility.  A  Madame  Cardinal  of 
any  other  nationality  would  be  simply  abominable, 
since  to  her  moral  obliquity  she  would  inevitably 
add  the  mental  degradation  fatal  to  the  last  vestiges 
of  self-respect.  As  it  is,  the  caricature  of  one  side 
of  the  French  nature  which  M.  Halevy's  admirable 
portrait  furnishes  serves  the  purpose  of  a  lens  of 
high  magnifying  power  in  exhibiting  the  weakness 
of  the  French  ideal  of  delicatesse.  Its  weakness  ap- 
pears equally  clear  when  Madame  Cardinal  is  gross- 
ly and  absurdly  flouting  it,  as  in  the  above  houtade, 
and  when,  as  is  generally  the  case,  she  is  grossly 
and  absurdly  affecting  it.  Delicatesse  is  a  social  and 
intellectual  virtue — not  a  personal  and  moral  one. 
It  is  the  refinement  of  good-sense  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  art  instinct  It  is,  in  a  word,  conscien- 
tiousness minus  sentiment.  What  is  the  quality  of 
conscientiousness — almost  as  frequent  with  us  as  its 
correlative  opposite,  cant — but  the  result  of  adding 
sentiment,  that  is,  serious  emotion,  to  a  disposition 
to  right  conduct  ?  And  the  French  lack  of  consci- 
entiousness in  its  deeper  and  subtler  sense,  and  their 
substitution  for  it  of  delicatesse,  indicates  very  strik- 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  139 

ingly  a  profound  lack  of  sentiment  also — an  adjust- 
ment of  the  susceptibility  to  social  expansion  instead 
of  to  personal  concentration.  Rousseau's  notion  of 
gaining  a  fortune  by  pressing  a  button  which  should 
kill  a  mandarin  has  no  attractions  for  us.  The  irre- 
sponsible levity  of  M.  Sarcey's  chagrin  at  having  killed 
a  servant  of  brain-fever,  by  trying  vainly  to  teach 
him  to  read,  gives  us  a  slight  shock.  We  have,  very 
hkely,  too  much  conscientiousness.  Everyone  will 
recall  absurd  instances  of  its  unhappy  exaggeration. 
But  our  possession  of  both  the  quality  and  its  defect 
is  one  of  our  differences  from  the  French.  Delicat- 
esse,  of  which  unquestionably  we  have  too  little,  is 
in  comparison  decidedly  an  external  and  rational 
quality.  Violation  of  its  precepts  results  in  morti- 
fication, but  not  remorse.  A  coarse  person  may  be- 
come thoroughly  delicat  by  careful  observation  of 
his  acts,  by  considerateness,  by  attention,  by  intel- 
lectual conviction  of  its  worldly  wisdom.  The 
-chances  are  against  his  success,  of  coiirse,  because 
of  the  well-known  difficulty  of  making  silk  purses 
out  of  anything  but  silk — but  it  is  not  impossible  ; 
whereas  to  "  become  "  conscientious  is  a  nonsense 
except  through  a  change  of  heart  and  the  aid  of 
sentiment  and  emotion. 

Certainly  the  frequency  of  French  allusions  to  so 
delicate  a  thing  as  delicacy  jars  on  a  sensitiveness 
that  is  acute  rather  than  rational — rude  rather  than 
civilized  the  French  would  perhaps  say.  You  feel 
like  the  little  boy  who,  being  taken  to  visit  a  family 


140  FRENCH   TRAITS 

of  very  articulate  piety,  protested  in  confidence  to 
his  mother  that  so  much  open  talk  about  God 
sounded  to  his  sense  too  much  like  "  bragging." 
Such  words  and  phrases  ashonneur,  gloire,  excessive- 
merit  scrupuleux,  trts  honorable,  extremement  delicat 
seem  to  us  over-frequent  in  French  usage,  because 
we  always  use  them  with  emotion,  and  with  personal 
emotion  (sincere  or  perfunctory),  and  so  fail  to  see 
that  the  French  use  them  scientifically.  An  Amer- 
ican miner — not  such  a  one  as  the  grotesque  Clark- 
son  of  M.  Dumas  fils's  imagination,  but  such  an  un- 
cut diamond  as  Bret  Harte's  Kaiutuck — would  un- 
doubtedly find  M.  Augier's  Mai'quis  de  Presles  lack- 
ing in  true  sensitiveness  in  boasting  of  his  pedigree 
and  prating  of  his  honor.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
delicacy  of  Una's  lion  itself  probably  seems  a  little 
fcmtastic  to  the  Frenchman,  who  would  be  sure  also 
to  share  the  feeling  of  the  Marseillais  for  that  of 
Inghomar.  His  highly  developed  social  instinct, 
his  remarkable  intelligence,  his  good-sense,  his  lack 
of  sentiment,  enable  him  to  disport  freely  and  even 
gracefully  on  what  appears  to  our  eyes  the  thinnest 
of  thin  ice  ;  he  talks  with  great  frankness  of  intimate 
things,  makes  confidently  all  manner  of  delicate  al- 
lusions, seems  to  menace  an  assault  upon  the  very 
citadel  of  your  privacy,  asks  with  inimitable  aplomb 
questions  of  an  indiscretion  wLicli  makes  your  own 
awkwardness  fairly  gasp — all  because  his  interest  in 
these  things  is  purely  impersonal  and  uncolored  with 
a  tinge  of  sentiment.     Take,  for  example,    the  in- 


SENSE  AND   SENTIMENT  141 

stance  of  money.  The  French  consider  America 
El  Dorado  ;  and  having  regard  to  the  comparative 
ease  with  which  money  is  made  here,  they  are  quite 
right.  But  they  entirely  mistake  our  interest  in 
money,  which  they  imagine  to  be  intensely  philis- 
tine,  whereas  it  is  not  so  much  that  we  care  for 
money  as  that  we  care  as  a  nation  for  little  else. 
Money  is,  on  the  other  hand,  only  one  of  the  far 
more  numerous  and  multifarious  interests  of  the 
French  ;  but  they  talk  about  it  as  we  never  do,  and 
as,  in  fact,  sounds  cynical  to  American  ears.  Money- 
making  is  so  much  a  matter  of  course  with  the  vast 
majority  of  our  people  that  without  being  paradoxi- 
cal we  may  call  our  preoccupation  with  it  in  a  meas- 
ure disinterested.  We  pursue  the  end  of  money- 
getting  more  or  less  artistically,  in  a  word,  and  the 
extravagance  and  recklessness  with  which  we  spend 
it  proceeds  from  this  and  not  from  vulgarity,  as 
Europeans,  whose  experience  tells  them  nothing  on 
this  point,  believe.  It  is,  in  fine,  with  us  an  end 
rather  than  a  means,  and  consequently  enables  us 
to  escape  that  sordidness  which  does  not  fail  to 
shock  us  abroad.  Our  attitude  is  thus  irrational  be- 
side that  of  the  French,  and  causes  their  frank  eager- 
ness of  acquisition  and  undisguised  economy  of 
spending  to  seem  extremely  terre-d-terre  to  us. 
"  Coal-oil- Johnny  "  is  really  a  less  vulgar  figure  than 
the  more  sensible  P6re  Grandet,  and  he  is  perhaps 
a  less  frequent  type  with  us  than  Balzac's  miser  is  in 
France.     As  business  is  a  less  definite  pursuit  with 


142  FRENCH  TRAITS 

the  French,  it  becomes  in  dilution  even  more  gen- 
eral ;  it  is  followed  as  art  is  with  us — not  only  by 
the  profession,  but  by  an  innumerable  army  oi 
amateurs.  And  it  is  largely  with  these  that  the 
American  visitor  comes  into  contact.  His  mental 
note-book  is  naturally,  thus,  crowded  with  disagree- 
able and  exasperating  data  of  what  seems  to  his 
haste  indeHcacy  carried  beyond  the  honorable  limit. 
But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  these  instances  rarely 
illustrate  an  offence  committed  against  the  unwrit- 
ten law  of  the  French  community  itself,  and  that 
therefore  dishonorable  is  an  inapplicable  epithet 
To  expect  a  community  to  change  its  customs  in 
these  regards  for  the  benefit  of  your  naivete  would 
be  to  exhibit  still  greater  naivete  ;  but  it  is  impos- 
sible not  to  argue  fi-om  them  an  indisposition  to  per- 
mit good-sense  any  sentimental  relaxation  whatever, 
even  in  circumstances  of  the  utmost  seductiveness  to 
a  sensitive  nature. 

The  French  commimity  is  destitute  of  many  sen- 
timental influences  which  are  very  potent  with  us. 
The  home,  for  instance,  in  England  and  among  our- 
selves is  a  nursery  of  sentiment  to  a  degree  which 
it  certainly  is  not  in  France — right  as  the  French 
are  in  resenting  our  absurd  misconception  of  their 
home-life.  Mother  and  children  are  not,  in  France, 
brought  into  such  sympathetic  and  sentimental  re- 
lations. The  reciprocal  affection  is,  of  course,  just 
as  sure  and  puissant,  but  its  sinews  are  rational 
She  does  not  efface  herself  so  much,  and  aspire  to 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  143 

live  only  in  them.  They  are  educationally  and 
otherwise  occupied  instead  of  developing  emotional 
precocity.  There  are  no  long  readings  winter  even- 
ings, and  none  of  that  intimate  companionship  so 
often  productive  of  what,  physiologically  speaking, 
has  been  so  aptly  termed  "  emotional  prodigality." 
Our  society  is  in  considerable  measure  leavened  by 
young  men  who,  chiefly  through  this  prodigality, 
have  at  one  time  or  another  contemplated  entering 
the  ministry,  and  have  abandoned  the  notion  only 
after  the  momentous  struggle  which  leaves  lasting 
traces  on  the  sensibility.  French  youth  do  not  know 
what  solitude  is ;  their  only  "  communings "  are 
communication.  They  naturally  have  less  aptitude 
for  the  spiritual  side  of  life  than  for  its  sensual  and 
rational  sides.  The  heart  and  the  passions  are  of 
course  as  highly,  if  not  as  exclusively,  developed  in 
France  as  elsewhere,  but  in  the  elevation  I  have  al- 
ready mentioned — in  considering  French  morality 
— of  the  mind  over  the  soul  the  tendency  to  mate- 
rialism is  never  far  from  the  surface. 

In  fine,  when  the  French  enter  the  realm  of  sen- 
timent they  do  not  seem  quite  at  home.  They  are 
in  danger  of  becoming  either  fantastic  or  conven- 
tional. "  Les  deux  tours  de  Notre  Dame  sont  le  H 
de  Hugo ! "  exclaims,  one  day,  Auguste  Vacquerie  to 
Jules  Claretie,  and  Claretie  chronicles  the  remark 
as  an  impressive  one.  Similar  extravagances  pass 
muster  in  the  sphere  of  art,  though  only  where  sen- 
timent is  concerned.     On  the  other  hand,  though 


144  FRENCH  TRAITS 

nowhere  ia  beauty  admired  more  fanatically — adored 
more  abjectly,  one  may  almost  say — the  idea  of  it  is 
often  conventional  enough.  Expression,  sentimezit, 
do  not  count  for  so  much  as  regularity.  Le  charme 
prime  la  beaute  is  a  French  adage,  but  what  consti- 
tutes charm  is  the  real  question.  As  the  vocabular- 
ies disclose,  a  single  French  word  answers  to 
"beautiful,  fine,  handsome."  Sometimes  charm  ia 
mere  chic,  cachet,  style,  order  and  movement  in  car- 
riage. That  at  any  rate  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
great  Parisian  substitute  for  beauty,  and  has  doubt- 
less become  so  by  natural  selection.  Accordingly, 
for  the  most  part  they  confine  their  activities  to  the 
sphere  of  the  intelligence,  where  they  are  never  fan- 
tastic and  rarely  perfunctory  ;  and  they  find  no  diffi- 
culty whatever  in  doing  this,  because  the  atmosphere 
of  the  intelligence  is  their  natural  element 

Notice,  for  example,  the  diction  of  French  acting. 
It  is  the  sense  and  not  the  sentiment  of  the  verse  or 
prose  that  is  savored  by  the  actor  and  the  audience. 
The  voice  never  caresses  the  emotion  evoked  by  the 
significance  of  the  lines  beyond  the  point  needful  for 
complete  expression.  The  personal  feeling  by  which 
such  an  actor  as  Salvini  infuses  warmth  and  glow 
into  his  most  polished  impersonations,  the  boards  of 
the  Comudie  Frauyaise  never  witness.  It  is  an  im- 
personal, that  is  to  say,  a  purely  intellectual  enjoy- 
ment that  one  obtains  from  the  delicious  voice  and 
admirable  acting  of  Madame  Sarah  Bernhardt,  when 
she  is  at  her  best,  when  she  is  most  contained,  wheu 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  145 

she  appeals  most  strongly  to  the  Parisian.  There  is 
absolutely  no  sentiment  whatever  in  that  quintes- 
sence of  the  exquisite  which  has  made  Madame  Judic 
the  most  popular  actress  of  Paris.  An  American  or 
Englishman,  and  I  should  suppose,  a  fortiori,  a  Ger- 
man, is  infallibly  much  impressed  in  his  early  stages 
of  French  theatre-going  at  the  absence  of  intensity 
in  the  love  passages  ;  the  absence  of  all  that  kissing, 
clasping,  enfolding,  rushing  together,  gazing  into 
the  depths  of  each  other's  eyes — in  fine,  all  that  effort 
to  enact  the  unutterable  which  is  so  characteristic  of 
our  stage  as  to  have  become  thoroughly  perfunctory. 
That  this  sort  of  thing  does  not  exist  on  the  French 
stage  is  partly  due,  to  be  sure,  to  a  nicer  sense  of 
propriety,  which  dictates  the  limits  of  what  is  fit 
subject  for  ai'tistic  representation ;  but  mainly  it  is  to 
be  ascribed  to  the  predominance  of  good-sense  over 
sentiment  in  the  French  appetite.  One  of  the  most 
refined  pleasures  that  this  world  furnishes  to  the  ed- 
ucated intellectual  palate  is  the  acting  of  Mademoi- 
selle Susanne  Reichemberg.  It  is  not  only  delicious 
in  its  ingenue  quality,  but  it  has  an  ampleness — what 
the  French  call  envergure — wholly  remarkable  in  this 
kind  of  art.  Yet  the  foreigner  undoubtedly,  during 
a  long  apprenticeship,  finds  Mademoiselle  Reichem- 
berg's  art  a  little  faint,  a  Httle  thin,  a  little  elusive, 
because  of  the  ethereality  with  which  it  hovers  over 
the  region  of  sentiment,  without  ever  alighting  so 
that  he  may  repose  his  apprehensive  faculties  an  in- 
stant and  devote  himself  to  pui'ely  sensuous  enjoy- 
10 


146  FRENCH   TRAITS 

meni  There  is  no  pause,  no  intermission  in  which  to 
meditate,  as  we  say — the  word  often  being  a  euphem- 
ism for  "dream."  In  the  presence  of  a  worthy  ob- 
ject, the  Frenchman's  pleasure  is  produced  by  the 
act  of  apprehension  itself  ;  oiurs  by  the  stimulus  ap- 
prehension gives  to  the  sensibiUty.  We  like  the 
light  touch,  but  we  like  it  to  linger.  Take  such  a 
piece  as  M.  Augier's  charming  trifle,  called  "Le 
Post-Scriptum."  It  is  impossible  for  the  American 
to  repress  a  wish  that  there  were  more  of  it ;  the 
d^ouement  occurs  just  as  sentiment  enters  the 
scene.  The  Frenchman  can  imagine  the  rest ;  so 
can  we,  but  we  want  it  imagined  for  us  all  the  same 
— we  are  more  sentimental  The  French  public 
would  never  have  demanded  the  epilogue  of  "  The 
Newcomes." 

Pathos  and  gi'andeur  and  their  adequate  presen- 
tation are  by  no  means  unknown  to  the  French 
stage,  though  assuredly  they  are  not  its  strong 
points.  But  it  is  always  unmistakably  apparent  that 
these  are  never  pursued  outside  the  realm  of  pure 
intelligence,  and  driven  to  a  refuge  in  that  of  pure 
emotion.  Even  in  such  a  torrent  of  passion  as  that 
which  Got  portrays  in  "Les  Rantzau,"  for  example 
— certainly,  as  he  presents  it,  one  of  the  most  pow- 
erful scenes  to  be  found  in  the  contemporary  drama — 
the  spectator  is  throughout  acutely  conscious  of  the 
illusion  in  virtue  of  which  art  is  art  and  not  a  vul- 
garization of  nature.  In  other  words,  however  the 
feelings  may  be  stirred,  the  mind  is  maintained  in 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  147 

continuous  activity,  and  never  abdicates  in  favor  of 
the  momentum  of  pure  emotion.  Exactly  the  oppo- 
site is  the  experience  of  the  spectator  who  witnesses 
Miss  Morris's  remarkable  impersonation  of  Cora,  in 
"  Article  47,"  say — in  seeing  which  the  nerves  vibrate 
long  after  the  moral  susceptibility  is  too  benumbed 
to  react.  Similar  contrasts  are  noticeable  in  every 
department  of  activity. 

The  absence  of  anything  answering  to  our  negro- 
minstrelsy  presents  a  very  striking  one.  Few  things 
could  be  less  alike  than  the  sensations  obtainable 
from  the  ca/e-concert  entertainment  and  those  pro- 
duced by  the  melancholy  songs  and  the  burnt-cork 
buffoonery  under  whose  benign  influence  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  sensibility  is  so  wont  to  expand.  "  They  have 
gazed,"  said  Thackeray  of  his  spectacles,  "  at  dozens 
of  tragedy -queens,  dying  on  the  stage  and  expiring 
in  appropriate  blank  verse,  and  I  never  wanted  to 
wipe  them.  They  have  looked  up,  with  deep  respect 
be  it  said,  at  many  scores  of  clergymen  in  pulpits, 
and  without  being  dimmed  ;  and  behold !  a  vaga- 
bond, with  a  corked  face  and  a  banjo,  sings  a  little 
song,  strikes  a  wild  note  which  sets  the  whole  heart 
thrilling  with  happy  pity."  It  would  be  difficult,  I 
think,  to  explain  to  a  Frenchman  the  significance  of 
*'  thrilling  with  happy  pity  ;  "  or  the  value  in  general 
of  idle  tears  drawn  from  the  depths  of  never  so  divine 
a  despair  ;  or  the  connection  of  this  kind  of  emotion 
with  that  with  which  Thackeray  associates  it  in  say- 
ing, in  the  same  paragraph  which  records  the  dim- 


148  FRENCH  TRAITS 

ming  of  his  spectacles  by  a  sentimental  ditty,  "  I  have 
seen  great,  whiskered  Frenchmen  warbling  the 
'Bonne  Vieille,'  the  'Soldats,  au  pas,  au  pas,'  with 
tears  rolling  down  their  mustachea"  "Is  there 
then,"  one  can  fancy  him  asking  in  perplexity,  "  no 
difference  between  the  respective  ways  in  which 
B6ranger  and  a  banjoist  affect  the  English  sensibil- 
ity?" 

We  miss  unction  in  the  expression  with  which  the 
French  read  even  the  lyric  and  emotional  verse  and 
prose  of  their  own  authors.  A  Frenchman  seems  to 
see  in  such  idyls  as  Daudet's  '*  Lettres  de  Mon  Mou- 
lin" a  wholly  different  kind  of  charm  from  that 
which  penetrates  us.  What  we  call  unction  would 
undoubtedly  seem  to  him  unctuousness — especially 
should  he  listen  to  some  of  our  professional  elocu- 
tionists, who  bear  on  so  hard  as  to  make  the  ten- 
derer sentiments  fairly  squeak.  Even  in  personal 
matters,  sentiment  with  the  French  does  not  outlast 
the  intellectual  occasion  of  it.  In  the  sincerest  grief 
they  are  easily  consoled.  Their  sanity  comes  speedily 
to  their  rescue  from  the  peril  of  morbidness,  which, 
from  their  point  of  view,  it  is  so  clearly  a  duty  to 
avoid  that  they  devote  themselves  to  it  consciously 
and  expressly.  Inconstancy  is  therefore  not  a  trait 
to  be  ashamed  of.  Certain  forms  of  constancy,  on 
the  other  hand,  seem  puerile  and  rudimentarj'.  Be 
constant  just  so  long  as  instinct,  reason,  and  passion 
dictate.  UamoxLr  becomes  Vamitie  with  appalling 
swiftness.     There  are,  perhaps,  as  many  "  John  An- 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  149 

dersons  " — Daudet's  "Lea  Vieux"  is  as  touching  as 
the  Scotch  poem — but  they  are  not  given  to  senti- 
mentahzing.  In  the  average  Parisian  the  horror  of 
old  age  has  something  almost  hysterical  about  it. 
For  them,  more  than  for  anyone  else,  the  days  of 
their  youth  are  the  days  of  their  glory. 

The  feeling  for  landscape  is  said  to  be  a  modern 
sentiment.  In  a  Wordsworthian  degree  of  intensity 
it  may  be  ;  though  from  Sophocles  to  Shakespeare 
there  is  not  wanting  abundant  evidence  of  the  power 
of  nature  over  human  emotions.  But  here,  at  any 
rate,  is  a  field  in  which  the  imagination  has  full  sway, 
in  which  the  feeling  for  what  is  can  be  indulged  un- 
hampered by  what  is  made,  where  the  mind  is  led 
captive  by  the  sense  and  the  sense  itself  seduced  by 
the  fancy,  where  sentiment,  uncurbed  by  either  the 
intellect  or  the  will,  reacts  under  the  e£fect  of  nature's 
beauty  in  such  a  way  as  to  transfigure  the  cause  it- 
self of  so  much  emotion  and  transform  the  actual 
aspect  of  nature  into  celestial  mii-age.  Mention  that 
phenomenon  to  the  Frenchman,  and  you  will  be 
sure  to  find  his  civility  hardly  capable  of  concealing 
his  scepticism.  You  will  discover  in  him  something 
of  the  feeling  you  yourself  experience  in  the  pres- 
ence of  certain  manifestations  of  German  sentiment. 
It  has  been  said,  indeed,  of  Theodore  Rousseau  that 
whereas  other  men  loved  nature,  he  was  in  love  with 
her ;  but  Rousseau  was  a  specialist,  and,  like  George 
Sand,  remains  wholly  exceptional.  Daudet's  Bom- 
pard,  who  finds  Switzerland  "  un  pay  sage  de  conven- 


150  FRENCH   TRAITS 

tion,"  is  the  type.  In  the  presence  of  nature  even 
the  Proven9al  is  recueilli.  The  true  Frenchman, 
who  is  socially  and  intellectually  expansion  itself,  is 
no  more  touched  by  green  fields  and  new  pastures 
than  such  English  exceptions  as  Sydney  Smith  or 
Doctor  Johnson.  Only  by  an  excess  of  sentiment 
over  the  thinking  power  can  one  surrender  himself 
fully  to  the  pantheistic  charm  of  landscape,  or  share 
that  passion  for  "  scenery  "  which  niles  strongly  in 
the  breast  of  even  our  philistine. 

As  with  nature,  so  in  art — a  domain  wherein  the 
modern  Frenchman  believes  himself  supreme,  and 
wherein,  indeed,  he  is  on  many  sides  unrivalled.  In 
architecture,  painting,  sculpture,  and  poetry,  one 
may  almost  say  that  whereas  the  antique  and  the 
Renaissance  art  appealed  to  the  mind  through  the 
sense,  the  French  genius  reaches  the  sense  through 
the  mind.  The  mind  at  all  events  is  first  satisfied. 
It  is  the  science  rather  than  the  sentiment  of  per- 
haps the  most  emotional  plastic  art  in  the  world — 
mediaeval  architecture,  namely — that  strikes  most 
powerfully  its  most  emii»ent  expositor,  IVL  Viollet-le- 
Duc,  as  appears  not  merely  in  his  admirable  "  Dis- 
courses," but  especially  in  his  restorations,  which 
are  as  cold  as  the  stone  that  composes  them.  French 
Rjsthetic  criticism  in  all  departments  is  pervaded  by 
this  spirit.  And  as  criticism  far  more  than  imagina- 
tive writing  demands  standards  and  canons  in  order 
to  attain  coherence  and  effectiveness,  it  is  perhaps 
for  this  reason  that  French  criticism  is  altogether 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  151 

unequalled.  Competence  may  be  measured,  biit 
sentiment  is  less  palpable  ;  accordingly,  in  every 
artistic  province  competence  mainly  is  what  is 
looked  for,  seen,  and  discussed.  Accordingly,  too, 
it  mainly  is  what  is  found.  Not  only  is  the  technic 
more  interesting  as  a  rule  than  the  idea,  the  treat- 
ment worthier  than  the  motive.  This  is  a  conse- 
quence of  highly  developed  education,  which,  though 
it  may  not  stifle  inspiration,  yet  infallibly  disturbs 
the  relation  which,  under  more  rudimentary  condi- 
tions of  training,  conception  and  execution  recipro- 
cally sustain.  But  what  is  more  noteworthy  and 
more  natively  characteristic  of  French  art  is  that  the 
technic  itself  is  sapient  rather  than  sensuous.  Your 
respect  for  it  reaches  admiration  ;  but  exceptions  like 
Vollon,  whose  touch  seduces  you  by  its  charm,  are 
rare.  Manet  and  the  whole  impressionist  school. 
Degas  apart,  whose  art  begins  and  ends  in  technic, 
are  in  the  last  analysis  admirable  rather  than  mov- 
ing ;  the  mass  of  the  school,  indeed,  still  handles  its 
brush  polemically.  Observe  the  difference  between 
Diaz  (who  is  essentially  not  Spanish  but  French)  and 
Monticelli  (who  is  essentially  not  French  but  Italian) 
in  the  matter  of  sentiment.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
which  is  the  saner  painter,  which  has  the  larger 
method,  but  there  are  chords  of  infinite  refinement  in 
the  other's  poetic  register  that  Diaz  never  reaches  ; 
his  fine  ladies  and  gallants  are  very  courtly,  they 
have  the  grand  air,  but  they  have  not  the  exquisite 
suavity  of  Monticelli's,  and  do  not  breathe  the  same 


152  FRENCH  TRAITS 

ether.  The  grent  annual  exhibition  at  the  Palais  de 
rindustrie  contains  no  sentiment  like  that  of  the 
Venetian  Nono,  the  English  Bume- Jones,  the  Ameri- 
can Martin  ;  there  is  no  tone  like  Segantini's,  no 
color  like  La  Farge's.  Even  in  the  crucial  in- 
stances of  Corot  and  Millet — not  to  mention  Troyon 
and  Daubigny — even  in  the  case  of  the  Fontaine- 
bleau  coterie,  which  contrasts  so  strongly  with  the 
mass  of  French  art,  and  which  is  thoroughly  poetic, 
there  is  still  visible  the  high,  clear  prevalence  of 
French  style,  French  distinction,  French  reserve, 
order,  measure.  Corot  is,  I  think,  yet  more  em- 
inent for  style  than  for  sentiment  Millet's  sen- 
timent is  a  trifle  morbid  ;  his  melancholy  is  not 
intense  and  spontaneous,  but  pervasive  and  discour- 
aged. It  is  not  quite,  I  think,  the  spontaneous, 
natural  note  which  produces  the  poetry  of  "  Turner's 
seas  and  Reynolds's  children,"  comparatively  impo- 
tent as  the  technic  is  in  either  English  case.  It  has 
a  philosophical  touch  in  it ;  it  is  mentally  preoccu- 
pied. The  French  peasant  is,  in  fine,  too  exclusively 
Millet's  subject.  Even  in  the  Fontainebleau  coterie 
the  thinking  power  dominates. 

Of  course  the  same  characteristic  is  quite  as  no- 
ticeable in  poetry  as  in  plastic  art.  French  tragedy 
is  not  what  the  younger  Crebillon  called  it — "  the 
most  perfect  farce  ever  invented  by  the  human 
mind  " — but  it  has  incontestably  the  qualities  of 
prose  ;  it  has  even  the  defects  of  prose.  As  a  rule 
it  is  clear,  placid,  measured,  the  emotional  element 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  153 

quite  lost  in  its  contained  and  cadenced  expression  ; 
or  else  it  is  emphase.  We,  at  least,  cannot  quite  un- 
derstand what  is  meant  by  what  the  French  say 
about  the  rude  grandeur  of  Corneiile,  except  by  con- 
trasting him  with  the  ingenious  and  refined  but,  to 
oui'  notion,  not  deeply  poetic  Racine  ;  and,  of  course, 
such  a  contrast  has  nothing  in  the  way  of  positive 
judgment  in  it.  Still  it  is  the  fashion  to  misappre- 
ciate  French  classic  poetry  in  English,  and  to  misap- 
preciate  it  very  grossly  and  absurdly  ;  the  affecta- 
tion of  over-estimating  it  is  very  recent  and,  as  yet, 
very  little  disseminated.  We  have  far  more  to  learn 
from  the  French  admiration  of  it  than  we  commonly 
imagine.  It  is  singular  that  we  should  be  as  temer- 
arious as  we  are  in  judging  an  art  with  whose 
medium  of  expression  we  are  so  little  familiar. 
Plastic  art  is  a  universal  language.  The  French 
idiom  is  perhaps  the  modern  tongue  whose  idio- 
syncrasies are  most  highly  developed,  in  the  first 
place,  and,  in  the  second,  the  most  inaccessible  to 
the  foreigner.  But  one  thing  is  plain,  an  English- 
speaking  person  is  apt  to  underestimate  its  poetic 
capacity  because  of  the  peculiar  composition  of  his 
own  language.  How  much  of  the  poetic  quality  of 
English  verse  and  prose  is  due  to  the  fact  that  we 
have  a  double  vocabulary  it  would  be  difficult  to  de- 
termine. It  is  certainly  very  considerable.  The 
play  of  mind  and  emotion  afforded  by  this  easy 
method  of  avoiding  prosaic  associations  by  using 
the  Saxon  or  the  Latin  word  or  phrase,  or  both,  or 


154  FRENCH  TRAITS 

varying  their  proportions,  as  the  shade  of  sense  may 
prompt,  is  very  great.  We  rely  so  unconsciously  on 
this  advantage  that  we  feel  its  absence  as  the  French, 
who  do  not  know  it,  of  course  cannot,  and  as  it  is, 
equally  of  course,  wholly  unjust  to  feel  in  the  case 
of  French  poetry.  When  Creon  exclaims  to  (Edipus, 
who  has  the  madness  to  appear  in  Thebes,  "  Quelle 
imprudence  extreme  !  "  the  Enghsh- speaking  spec- 
tator, who  misses  the  value  of  the  tone,  adjudges 
the  poetic  quality  of  the  ejaculation  about  equiva- 
lent to  that  of  a  reproach  addressed  to  a  man  who 
should  have  had  the  imprudence  to  brave  the  night- 
air  without  an  overcoat.  He  does  not  see  that  such 
a  word  as  imprudence  is,  so  far  as  its  poetic  quality 
is  concerned,  a  totally  different  word  from  "  impru- 
dence." Even  a  critic  of  so  nice  a  sense  and  a 
French  scholar  of  such  distinction  as  Mr.  Arnold 
complains  that  the  only  word  the  French  have  for 
'•  fustian "  is  emphase — our  word  for  emphasis. 
But  emphase  in  the  proper  circumstances  means  to  a 
Frenchman  precisely  what  fustian  means  to  us  ;  it 
does  not  mean  emphasis  at  all.  It  would  be  as  per- 
tinent to  find  the  French  lack  of  musical  instinct  at- 
tested by  their  making  chanticleer  chanter  instead  of 
"crow."  We  cannot  proceed  too  cautiously  where 
the  shades  of  the  French  language  are  concerned. 
There  is  no  feu  follet  which  equals  it. 

Nevertheless,  let  us  note  that  this  applies  mainly 
So  technic;  and  that  after  we  have  admitted  our 
incompetence  to  pronounce  upon  the  poetic  quality 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  15.'> 

of  the  medium,  and  come  as  directly  as  thus  wt 
may  to  the  substance  of  French  poetiy,  we  almost 
infallibly  find  this  to  have  the  quality  of  rhetoric 
rather  than  of  absolute  poetry,  as  we  understand 
the  term.  Its  stuff  is  assuredly  not  star-dust. 
Keats's  conjunction  of  the  two  words  "Cold  pasto- 
ral ! "  shows  the  power  of  the  alchemist  who  fuses 
thought  and  emotion  at  thg  white  heat  requisite  for 
producing  the  quintessence  of  poetry.  Beside  them 
Victor  Hugo's  naively  admired  characterization  of 
death  as  "La  grande  endormeuse "  is  the  rhetorical 
variant  of  a  classic  commonplace.  On  the  other 
hand,  where  elevation  rather  than  intensity  of  poetic 
emotion  is  in  question,  the  rhetorical  quality  of 
French  poetry  is  still  more  apparent ;  it  is  perfect 
rhetoric,  but  its  rational  and  finite  alloy  is  still  more 
noticeable.  Is  there  anything  in  Victor  Hugo's 
trinity  of  Rabelais,  Moliere,  and  Voltaire,  or  in 
"soft  Racine  and  grave  Comeille,"  that  strikes  pre- 
cisely the  same  note  as  Lear  turning  from  his  dead 
Cordelia  with  "  Pray  you,  undo  this  button — thank 
you,  sir ! "  ?  Yet  you  may  find  in  English  prose  the 
same  sudden  poetic  harmonizing  with  the  calm  and 
simplicity  of  nature  herself  when  personal  emotion 
has  spent  its  exaltation  ;  for  example,  where  Henry 
Esmond,  after  his  tirade  to  the  Prince,  turns  to  his 
cousin  with  "Frank  will  do  the  same,  won't  you, 
cousin  ?  " 

Lack  of  sentiment,  too,  seems  to  me  directly  re- 
sponsible for  that  intrusion  of  philosophy  into  the 


156  FRENCH   TRAITS 

domain  of  art,  which  is  a  French  eccentricity — just 
as,  perhaps,  to  an  excess  of  sentiment  is  to  be  at- 
tributed the  tendency  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  artist  to 
infiltrate  his  work  with  moralizing.  Balzac  and 
Thackeray  contrast  in  illustration  of  this  as  in  so 
many  other  respects.  In  either  instance  art  loses — 
in  the  one  because  sentiment  overshadows  the  artis- 
tic sense,  in  the  other  because  there  is  no  qualify- 
ing sentiment  to  prevent  paradox  through  the  me- 
dium of  tact  and  feeling.  Dreary  pages  of  Balzac 
would  have  been  spared  his  readers  had  his  intelli- 
gence been  sentimentally  modified.  But  it  is  in 
such  instances  as  that  which  the  younger  Dumas 
presents  that  this  characteristic  effect  is  best  seen. 
The  younger  Dumas  is  taken  very  seriously  in 
France.  He  is  the  first  of  French  social  philoso- 
phers. He  uses  the  stage  as  a  professor  does  his 
desk.  His  plays  are  philosophical  deliverances ; 
and,  in  spite  of  their  immense  cleverness  of  artistic 
artifice,  they  are  invariably  artistic  paradoxes.  In- 
variably flie  sentiment  revolts  at  the  first  act,  and 
the  rest  of  the  piece  is  an  acted  argument  to  prove 
the  illogicality  of  this  repugnance,  its  philosophical 
unsoundness.  A  similar  note  is  observable  in  much 
of  Hugo's  work.  The  catastrophe  of  "Hernani"  is 
very  powerfully  buttressed,  but  sentimentally  it  is 
paradoxical  and  sterile.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
way  in  which  the  King  wins  the  love  of  his  victim 
in  "  Le  roi  s'amuse  ; "  it  is  very  likely  sound  em- 
pirical philosophy,  but  artistically  it  is  an  intrusion. 


SENSE   AND   SENTIMENT  167 

"  Les  Mi86rables  "  is  full  of  analogous  error,  owing 
to  the  same  cause.  And  in  fact,  nothing  is  so  hos- 
tile to  the  emphase  which  is  admittedly  the  great 
bane  of  Hugo's  writing,  as  the  subtle  sense  of  fitness 
born  of  feeling  alone  ;  where  he  is  instinctive  and 
truly  sentimental,  Hugo  is  superb.  Finally,  take 
the  still  more  conspicuous  instance  of  a  writer  who 
passes  in  general  for  very  nearly  a  pure  sentiment- 
alist, and  who  is  certainly  an  artist  of  the  first  class 
— M.  Eenan.  He  is  quite  right  in  classing  that 
curious  part  of  his  work,  of  which  "  L'Abbesse  de 
Jouarre  "  may  figure  as  the  most  striking  repre- 
sentative, as  pure  diversion ;  it  is  related  to  the 
mass  of  his  admirable  accomplishment  on  no  side. 
French  criticism  itself  finds  "L'Abbesse  de  Jou- 
arre "  displeasing ;  and  it  is  displeasing  because  in 
it  M,  Eeuan  virtually  reverses  his  usual  process,  and 
instead  of  philosopliy  penetrated  with  sentiment, 
gives  us  art  invaded  by  philosophy.  The  philoso- 
phy of  "L'Abbesse  de  Jouarre"  is,  perhaps,  not 
fantastic  as  philosophy,  but  as  art  the  piece  is  fatally 
lacking  in  sentiment ;  although  it  deals  with  love 
itself,  it  deals  with  it  argumentatively  ;  it  defends 
a  thesis  ;  it  is  what  the  French  call  thhe.  Perhaps 
did  the  world  believe  its  last  hour  come  there  would 
be  a  universal  outburst  of  sexual  love.  Perhaps  for 
people  in  general  love  is  a  passion  capable  of  enough 
sublimity  for  supreme  crises.  But  though  we  may 
grant  this,  we  do  not  feel  it.  Yet  with  the  most 
sentimental  of  French  philosophers  the  intellect  so 


158  FRENCH  TRAITS 

dominates  the  susceptibility  that  in  a  professed 
work  of  art  the  subject  is  taken  on  its  curious  side, 
even  at  the  expense  of  revolting  the  sentiment. 
And  if  we  examine  in  this  regard  a  great  deal  of 
cvurent  French  literature — the  immensely  clever 
and  impressive  work  of  ]V£  Guy  de  Maupassant  and 
M.  Richepin,  for  example — it  is  impossible  not  to 
note  the  frequency  with  which  this  motive  recurs  : 
namely,  illustration  of  the  warfare  between  truth 
and  sentiment,  of  the  incompatibility  between  zest 
for  the  real  and  aflfection  for  the  attractive,  and,  as 
a  constant  undertone,  the  superior  dignity  of  the 
former  in  either  instance.  The  spirit  and  temper 
of  this  literature  are  eccentric  only  in  degree  ;  they 
are  only  accentuations  of  the  national  turn  for  the 
domination  of  sentiment  by  sense. 

What  has  become  of  the  Celtic  strain  in  the 
French  nature  ?  How  superficial  of  Karl  HiUebrand 
to  assert,  "Grattez  le  Fran9ais  et  vous  trouverez 
rirlandais ! "  And  how  little  impression  the  Frank 
seems  to  have  made  on  the  true  French  character ! 
When  Siey^s  exclaimed  of  the  aristocracy,  "Let  us 
send  them  back  to  their  German  marshes  !  "  he  had 
not  only  the  nation,  but  the  French  nature  itself,  at 
his  back  The  fusion  of  the  Gaul  and  Roman  seems 
to  have  been  as  complete  in  character  as  in  institu- 
tions. Whatever  is  runic,  bardic,  weird,  barbaric, 
is  as  repugnant  to  the  Frenchman  of  to-day  as  to 
the  Roman  of  the  age  of  Augustus.  It  was  even 
repugnant  to  the  Frenchman  of  the  epoch  of  "  The 


SEN8E   AND   SENTIMENT  159 

Romaunt  of  the  Rose."  The  romance  and  chivalry 
of  Francis  L's  time  were  in  great  measure,  doubt- 
less, a  Merovingian  legacy ;  and  their  survival  in 
duels  and  deliberate  gallantry  nowadays,  amid  so 
much  that  is  terre-d-terre  and  eminently  unromantic, 
constitutes  an  odd  conjunction.  Of  the  Renaissance 
ideals,  nearly  the  only  one  spared  by  the  Revolution 
is  the  substitution  of  honor  for  duty  in  the  sphere 
of  morals.  Otherwise  even  the  jeunesse  doree  of  the 
day  is  more  bourgeoise  than  cavalier.  It  does  not 
include  many  Bayards.  As  equality,  tolerance, 
civilization,  material  comfort  move  forward,  senti- 
ment evaporates.  Rabelais  gives  place  to  Zola. 
Where  esprit  prevails,  sentiment  necessarily  suffers. 
Wit  is  hostile  to  the  penumbra  of  poetic  feeling 
inseparable  from  humor.  Fond  as  the  French  are 
of  intellectual  nuances,  they  have  in  the  sphere  of 
sentiment  singularly  few.  And  for  such  sentiment 
as  may  be  divined  or  anticipated — for  axiomatic  or 
commonplace  sentiment,  in  fine — their  contemptu- 
ousness  is  marked.  Voltaire's  peevish  reproach  to 
the  rival  responsible  for  his  mistress's  death  is  a 
characteristic  illustration ;  the  circumstances  so 
plainly  justified  indignation  that  the  only  resort  of 
the  intellectual  instinct  was  in  petulance.  A  soci- 
ety's need  of  sentiment,  we  may  perhaps  say,  having 
regard  at  any  rate  to  its  expression,  varies  inversely 
with  its  solidarity,  with  its  homogeneity  of  feeling  ; 
and  it  is  the  highly  developed  social  instinct  of  the 
French  that  dispenses  them  from  all  dependence 


160  FRENCH   TRAITS 

upon  that  epanchement,  tliat  sentimental  effusion, 
v/bich  we  find  so  necessary  to  the  enjoyment  of  so- 
cial intercourse— of  which  with  us,  indeed,  it  is  the 
very  essence. 

This  certainly  is  the  notion  of  the  French  them- 
selves. The  abandon  of  feeling  and  impulse,  which 
is  characteristically  Celtic,  they  regard  as  unciv- 
ilized. Their  apparent  excitement  on  occasion,  po- 
litical and  other,  contains  a  large  artistic  element, 
even  when  it  is  not  the  natural  accompaniment  of 
deliberate  action.  Their  entire  sentimental  attitude 
they  themselves  believe  to  be  the  antique  attitude. 
According  to  De  Maistre,  Racine  is  simply  a  Greek 
talking  French.  M.  Taine  points  out  the  similarity 
between  the  prominent  Athenian  traits  and  those 
of  his  countrymen.  The  parallelism  indisputably 
holds  good  in  many  points ;  but  there  is  an  impor- 
tant difference.  The  French  have  the  antique  san- 
ity ;  they  have  neither  the  serenity  nor  the  spiritu- 
ahty  of  the  antique  world.  The  immense  complex- 
ity of  the  modem  world  ;  the  tremendous  task  of 
clearing  away  the  debris  of  the  IVIiddle  Age,  which 
has  left  permanent  scars,  and  is  still  incomplete  ; 
the  substitution  of  diffusion  for  concentration  of 
culture  and  intelligence — are  all  hostile  to  national 
serenity,  to  national  spirituality.  The  force  which 
overwhelmed  the  antique  civilization  was  a  prodi- 
gious effusion  of  feeling.  The  people  that  issued 
soonest  and  farthest  from  the  night  that  succeeded 
naturally  freed  itself    most   completely    from  the 


SENSE  AND   SENTIMENT  161 

mediaeval  trait  of  mind  dominated  by  emotion.  So, 
amid  all  the  gayety  and  brilliant  verue  of  French 
life  at  its  flood,  we  feel  inevitably  with  Arnold,  ex- 
claiming in  Montmartre,  that  "  amiable  home  of  the 
dead"— 

So,  how  often  from  hot 

Paris  drawing-rooms,  and  lamps 

Blazing,  and  brilliant  crowds, 

Starred  and  jewell'd,  of  men 

Famous,  of  women  the  queens 

Of  dazzling  converse — from  fumes 

Of  praise,  hot,  heady  fumes,  to  the  poor  brain 

That  mount,  that  madden — how  oft 

Heine's  spirit,  outworn, 

Long'd  itself  out  of  the  din, 

Back  to  the  tranquil,  the  cool, 

Far  German  home  of  his  youth  I 

And  Heine,  who  belonged  plainly  to  Paris  by  his 
intellectual  side,  had  undoubtedly  that  un-Parisian 
sentiment  which,  when  he  was  sick  unto  death  and 
everything  external  seemed  trivial  to  him,  drew  him 
irresistibly  toward  his  old  German  grandmother,  in 
spite  of  the  exasperation  with  which,  in  his  prime, 
her  ingrained  philistinism  had  filled  him.  How 
much  more,  then,  do  we,  about  whose  intelligence 
there  is  very  little  that  is  Parisian,  who  have  no  such 
capacity  as  Heine  for  breathing  with  exhilaration 
the  rarefied  French  atmosphere,  feel  therein  the  lack 
of  that  sentiment  which  is  to  us  the  universal  sol- 
vent and  the  supreme  consolation. 
11 


162  FRENCH   TRAITS 

But  do  not  imagine  that  the  French  themselves 
feel  this  insufficiency.  Do  not  even  fancy  that  they 
quite  respect  our  contentment  with  vague  emotion, 
however  exquisite,  as  a  substitute  for  the  bracing 
air  of  those  heights  where  the  mind  exerts  itself 
freely  and  the  consciousness  disports  itself  at  its 
ease.  To  them  Parnassus — or  the  Parisian  variety 
of  it — is  far  more  attractive  than  the  fireside.  They 
are  no  more  "  maddened  "  by  the  "heady  fumes  of 
praise  "  than  the  eagle  is  blinded  by  the  sun,  or  the 
owl  dismayed  by  the  darkness,  or  any  other  creature 
disabled  by  its  natural  element.  One  of  Edmond 
About's  eulogists  exclaimed  at  his  funeral,  with  a 
fine  burst  of  eloquence,  referring  to  his  Alsatian 
birth :  "  Peut-il  etre  le  produit  d'une  terre  alle- 
mande  ! "  I  think  if  we  take  Heine  as  an  evidence 
that  the  French  ideal  is  unsatisfactory  to  the  Ger- 
manic foreigner  best  disposed  thereto  by  nature  and 
training,  About  may  be  taken  as  the  type  of  the 
highly  organized  and  really  noble  nature  to  which 
this  ideal  seems  complete,  and  which  reminds  us 
that  if  the  French  are  the  least  poetic,  they  are  the 
sanest  of  modem  peoples.  The  nation  itself  de- 
serves Hugo's  praise  of  Paris  :  "  Paris  a  6te  tremp6 
dans  le  bon  sens,  ce  Styx  qui  ne  laisse  point  passer 
les  ombres  " — "  Paris  has  been  dipped  in  good-sense 
'—that  Styx  which^ls  no  phantoms  pass." 


V 

MANNERS 


MANNERS 

French  manners  are  artistic,  they  are  systema- 
tized and  uniform  ;  they  are  not  excessive  as  we 
erroneously  imagine  ;  they  are  frank  ;  they  are  gay 
and  gentle,  but  they  are  above  all  else  impersonal. 
In  this  sense  the  French  are  not  merely  the  most 
poHte  nation  in  the  world.  They  are  the  only  peo- 
ple who  of  the  communication  of  man  with  man 
distinctly  and  formally  make  a  recognized  medium, 
an  objective  "third  somewhat,"  in  metaphysical 
phrase,  in  which  the  speech  and  action  of  each  com- 
municant encounter  those  of  the  other  without  in 
any  degree  involving  either  individuality  behind 
them — which  is,  on  the  contrary,  left  pointedly  alone 
in  its  separate  and  independent  sphere.  With  re- 
gard to  this  last  indeed,  there  is  never,  except  in 
violation  of  the  social  code,  any  curiosity  mani- 
fested, unless  the  degree  of  intimacy  is  such  that 
manners  themselves  are  of  no  importance,  or  the 
individuality  is  of  so  particular  a  tj'pe  as  to  es- 
cape divination — both  of  which  contingencies  are 
rare.  And  it  is  perhaps  this  indifference  that  is 
m'linly  accountable  for  the  general  Anglo-Saxon  posi- 
tion concerning  French  politeness,  for  our  esteeming 


166  FRENCH  TRAITS 

it  incurably  artificial.  "We  no  more  like  to  submit 
to  the  perfect  unconcern  as  to  the  subtler  points 
of  our  ipdividuality  which  we  cannot  fail  to  remark 
in  the  way  in  which  the  politest  Frenchman  treats 
us,  than  we  like  the  persistence  with  which  he  ap- 
pears to  esteem  his  own  personality  a  matter  of  no 
moment  to  anyone  but  himself.  We  are  as  soHci- 
tous  to  impress  him  with  our  qualities  as  he  seems 
to  be  to  impress  us  with  his  accomplishments  ;  and 
we  resent  what  we  insist  on  considering  his  careful- 
ness to  conceal  his  real  opinions,  disposition,  charac- 
ter in  the  same  measure  in  which  we  are  piqued 
by  his  concentration  upon  our  own  supei*ficial 
graces — or  our  lack  of  any.  Ingrained  frivolity,  ab- 
solute superficiality,  is  invariably  our  verdict — se- 
cret or  outspoken  according  to  the  degree  of  our 
weakness  for  seeing  the  charm  of  purely  objective 
and  impersonal  intercourse  illustrated  by  others  in 
a  perfection  only  consistent,  as  we  profoundly, 
though  perfunctorily,  believe,  with  a  lack  of  deep 
and  large  sincerity  of  character.  It  is  so  difficult 
for  us  to  realize  that  in  manners,  as  the  French  un- 
derstand them,  there  is  no  more  question  of  charac- 
ter than  there  is  in  any  other  fine-art.  They  illus- 
trate the  individual's  ideal,  not  himself;  his  aspira- 
tions, not  his  qualities  ;  and  his  ideal  and  aspira- 
tions in  an  absolutely  impersonal  sphere  where 
what  serves  as  stimulus,  and  all  that  is  at  stake  are 
the  sense  of  external  propriety  and  the  artistic  fit- 
ness of  things.    . 


MANNERS  167 

How  exquisitely  adapted  the  French  are  to  excel 
in  precisely  this  sphere  is  indicated,  I  think,  by  the 
thread  of  this  essay.  The  social  instinct  which  sub- 
ordinates the  individual  and  suppresses  eccentricity, 
the  social  and  tolerant  nature  of  a  morality  which 
dictates  conformity  to  general  rather  than  personal 
standards,  a  highly  developed  intelligence  and  the 
absence  of  that  sentimentality  in  conjunction  with 
which  it  is  impossible  to  find  the  refinement  of  man- 
ners which  is  based  on  reason,  however  it  may  inspire 
that  politesse  de  cceur  in  which  Prince  Bismarck  finds 
the  French  lacking,  afford  precisely  the  conditions 
for  producing  in  perfection  an  impersonal,  artificial, 
graceful,  and  efficient  medium  of  social  intercourse. 
And,  in  fact,  of  manners,  as  the  French  understand 
and  illustrate  them,  it  may  be  said  that  we  lack  even 
the  conception.  Of  other  manifestations  of  the  ar- 
tistic spirit  we  at  least  permit  ourselves  the  luxury 
of  an  ideal.  It  does  not  "  cost  much  anyhow,"  we 
say  ;  and  indeed  it  does  not,  much  of  it ;  our  paint- 
ing and  sculpture  and  poetry  and  music  have  cost 
as  little  probably  as  the  fine-art  of  any  nation  of  the 
world  that  has  devoted  any  attention  whatever  to 
fine-art.  Our  amateurs  and  artists  are  nevertheless 
active  and  numerous,  and  it  can  no  longer  be  said 
of  us  that  fine-art  does  not  occupy  a  considerable 
share  of  our  attention.  In  what  is  sometimes  eso- 
terically  called  "  household  art "  we  are  even  already 
distinguished.  A  few  New  York  palaces  vie  with 
those  of  Genoa — whose  "  household  art "  had  a  simi- 


168  FRENCH   TRAITS 

lar  origin  ;  on  the  other  hand  the  chrome  and  th© 
Christmas-card  have  penetrated  social  strata  which 
in  France  enjoy  only  white  and  blue  wash.  But 
as  for  the  manifestation  of  this  same  artistic  expan- 
siveness  in  social  life  and  manners,  the  idea  simply 
never  occurs  to  us.  It  would  be  a  pardonably  fan- 
ciful exaggeration  to  say  that  by  manners  we  are 
very  generally  apt  to  understand  "  table  manners  ; " 
it  is  at  least  true  that  we  use  the  terms  manners 
and  etiquette  interconvertibly,  and  in  a  narrowly 
specific  sense.  In  "table  manners,"  as  a  rule,  we 
excel.  We  are  not  perhaps  so  distinguished  as  the 
English,  from  whom  we  inherit  the  conception,  but 
it  is  generally  conceded  in  France  I  suppose  that  the 
English  and  Americans  "  eat  better "  than  the  rest 
of  the  world.  "  Table  manners,"  however,  as  Anglo- 
Saxons  illustrate  them,  are  rather  a  department  of 
science  than  of  fine-art.  A  solecism  in  them  has  a 
fatal  importance,  and  a  mistake  is  mathematically 
an  error  ;  they  offer  no  field  for  that  human  quality 
which  is  necessary  to  constitute  art.  The  French 
certainly  do  not "  eat  well ; "  that  is  to  say,  as  a  rule. 
French  people  would  at  table  permit  themselves, 
and  overlook  in  others,  phenomena  which  Anglo- 
Saxons  of  the  same  social  grade  would  not  permit 
themselves  and  still  less  overlook  in  others.  But 
in  other  ways  they  certainly  carry  manners  to  an 
extent  we  but  vaguely  appreciate  and  perhaps  a 
little  disapprove.  It  is  indeed  noteworthy  that  aU 
other  manifestations  of  the  artistic  spirit  they  are 


MANNERS  169 

apt  to  make  subsidiary  and  subservient  to  manners  ; 
whereas  we  consider  these  ends  in  themselves  very 
often,  as  the  Talmud  does  study,  and  the  English 
neopagans  consider  dress.  In  France  they  are  pop- 
ularly regarded  as  humanizing  agents,  a  higher 
class  of  social  influences  perfecting  the  mind  and 
temper  and  preparing  them  for  success  in  the  one 
great  art  of  life  from  the  French  standpoint — social 
intercourse.  The  opera,  the  JSalons,  the  expositions 
retrospectives,  the  concours  hippiques  and  agronom- 
iques,  classical  concerts,  the  theatre  itself  afford  to 
countless  people — secondarily,  to  be  sure,  a  great 
deal  of  indirect  enjoyment,  more  intelligent  enjoy- 
ment, very  certainly,  than  is  anywhere  else  to  be 
witnessed,  as  the  occasion  of  it  is  almost  invariably 
superior  to  such  things  elsewhere — but,  primarily 
and  directly,  social  rendezvous  on  a  large  scale  and 
of  a  gay  character.  Artists  complain  loudly  of  this. 
The  Theatre  Frangais  is,  two  days  in  the  week, 
transformed  into  a  social  court,  as  it  were,  before 
which  the  actors  play  as,  mutatis  mutandis,  their 
predecessors  used  to  before  Louis  XTV.  ;  the  play 
is  distinctly  not  "  the  thing  ; "  the  thing  is  the  ren- 
dezvous. The  two  arts  in  which  the  French  excel 
all  peoples,  ancient  or  modem,  with  possibly  the  ex- 
ception of  the  Athenians  for  a  brief  period,  comedy 
and  conversation,  namely,  are  particularly  adapted 
to  French  excellence  because  of  their  intimate  and 
inextricable  connection  with  manners.  Painting 
and  music  and  poetry  are  all  very  well,  but  they 


170  FREITCH  TRAITS 

necessarily  take  the  second  rank  after  manners  in 
French  esteem,  and  French  proficiency  as  well,  be- 
cause as  professions  they  are  limited,  whereas  in 
manners  all  Frenchmen  are  artists. 

What  degree  of  perfection  comedy  has  reached  in 
France  it  would  be  a  wholly  superfluous  undertak- 
ing to  point  out.  It  is  conceived  in  a  larger,  more 
universal  way  than  elsewhere.  The  muse  of  comedy 
presides  over  every  Thespian  temple.  Tragedy  still 
has  her  stilts  on,  not  because  the  French  have  never 
heard  of  Euripides  and  Shakespeare,  but  because 
everything  not  distinctly  grandiose  falls  naturally 
into  the  domain  of  comedy.  The  mere  titles  la 
Comedie  Fran9aise,  la  Comcdie  Humaine,  I'Op^ra 
Comique — where  Auber  and  Herold  dominate  Offen- 
bach and  Lecocq — indicate  the  extension  given  to 
the  term  which  thus  includes  every  mimic  represen- 
tation of  reality  from  Le  Misanthrope  to  the  veriest 
vaudeville.  And  the  stream  of  French  comedy  in- 
undates and  fertilizes  all  Europe.  From  Stockholm 
to  Seville  and  from  London  to  Moscow  it  is  a  com- 
monplace that  every  stage-manager  and  every  dra- 
matic author  looks  constantly  toward  Paris,  where 
each  has  learned  his  trade  and  whence  most  have 
borrowed  their  substance.  And  in  the  art  of  con- 
versation, which  plays  in  private  life  the  part  of 
colloquy  on  the  stage,  the  nation  is  equally  unri- 
valled. All  the  French  activities  are  called  into 
exercise,  and  all  French  qualities  are  illustrated  in 
the  convei-sational  crackle  and  sparkle  of  daily  in- 


MANNERS  171 

tercourse,  in  which  constant  practice  and  ceaseless 
pleasure  lead  to  a  marvellous  artistic  proficiency. 
At  the  table,  in  the  drawing-room,  in  the  cafes,  in 
the  open-air  public  rendezvous  which  abovmd  every- 
where and  vary  in  importance  but  hardly  in  charac- 
ter from  the  Champs  lillysees  or  the  potirdtre  of 
the  Avenue  du  Bois  de  Boulogne  to  the  little  place 
or  boulevard  exterieur  of  a  village  en  province,  at 
every  leisure  moment  of  the  day — and  overflowing 
into  the  hours  of  industry,  which  themselves,  indeed, 
are  nevei",  even  in  their  most  secret  recesses,  shel- 
tered from  its  spray — the  stream  of  conversation  rip- 
ples ceaselessly  on  and  on.  All  Frenchmen  breathe 
the  atmosphere  thus  affected  and,  however  great 
their  differences,  are  thus  subject  in  common  to  a 
potent  unifying  influence  ;  so  that  each  individual, 
even  supposing  him  to  have  no  natural  bent  there- 
for, no  Gallic  alertness  and  lingual  felicity,  be- 
comes an  educated  artist  in  the  great  French  art. 
To  be  convinced  of  this,  one  does  not  need  to  re- 
mind himself  of  the  Hotel  Eambouillet,  of  the  salons 
which  since  Richelieu's  time  have  flourished  on  every 
hand,  of  the  society  of  the  grand  siecle  ;  one  has 
only  to  enter  a  cafe  or  even  a  cabaret,  or  chat  with 
an  omnibus-driver,  or  one's  next  neighbor  in  black 
coat  or  blouse  on  a  seat  in  a  public  square. 

About  this  conversation  there  are  two  striking  pe- 
culiarities :  It  is  in  the  first  place  literally  conversa- 
tion, and  in  the  second  it  is,  like  any  other  fine-art, 
practised  for  its  own  sake.     It  need  hardly  be  said 


172  FRENCH   TRAITS 

that  in  each  of  these  respects  French  conversation 
differs  from  our  own.  What  in  general  passes  for 
good  conversation  with  us  is  really  monologue — 
sometimes,  in  fact,  so  circumscribed  as  to  consti- 
tute a  sort  of  informal  lecture  ;  what  the  French,  in- 
deed (who  are  strangers  to  our  lyceum,  for  which 
they  substitute  a  considerable  higher  education),  call 
a  conference.  This  is  the  sense  in  which  it  is  dis- 
cussed by  Dr.  Holmes,  thiin  whom  no  one  has 
touched  the  subject  with  a  lighter  charm.  Dr. 
Holmes's  view  of  conversation  is  extremely  auto- 
cratic, and  would  be  intolerable  to  a  democratic  peo- 
ple like  the  French.  In  his  opinion  the  cardinal 
offence  is  interruption  ;  the  literal  and  unimaginative 
interrupter  is  the  individual  he  denounces,  but  it 
is  plain  that  it  is  the  fact  of  the  interruption  not  the 
interruption  of  fact  (as  he  might  say)  that  really  ex- 
asperates him.  French  conversation  is  in  great  part 
made  up  of  interruptions.  Its  essence  consists  in 
"  give  and  take."  The  most  brilliant  conversation- 
alist is  he,  or  she  (for  in  France  women  practise 
this  art  as  well  as  men)  who  succeeds  best  in  don- 
ner  la  replique.  Hence  epigram  and  repartee 
abound.  With  us  the  analogous  triumph  is  to  state 
some  truth,  sentiment,  fact  most  felicitously  and  to 
draw  from  it  some  apposite  conclusion.  Hence  the 
little  preachments,  anecdotes,  sermonettes  which  sea- 
son our  dinners.  As  for  pos^-prandial  eloquence,  in 
which  our  prandial  conversation  so  often  culminates 
upon  the  sUghtest  excuse,  to  which  it  is  merely  the 


MANNERS  173 

modest  prelude,  and  toward  which  it  tends  with  in- 
creasing momentum  from  the  soup  on,  it  is  nearly 
unknown  in  France.  Imagine  Mr.  Evarts  at  a 
French  dinner.  On  such  an  occasion  his  "speech" 
(for  which  the  French  language  has  no  word)  would, 
we  may  be  sure,  be  qualified  with  an  epithet  for 
which  the  EngHsh  tongue  has  no  equivalent ;  it 
would  be  pronounced  assomniant.  And  after  the 
formal  speaking  at  a  Delmonico  dinner,  say,  is  over, 
and  the  toasts  (another  word  which  illustrates  the 
poverty  of  the  French  vocabulary)  have  all  been 
drunk,  and  what  we  understand  by  general  conver- 
sation again  sets  in,  conducted  by  General  Horace 
Porter,  that  prince  of  anecdotists,  the  Frenchman 
would  certainly  find  himself  at  fault.  In  an  analo- 
gous position  at  home  he  would  be  sure  to  interrupt. 
The  French  raconteur  is,  it  is  true,  a  well-kiiown 
type,  but  he  is  oftener  than  not,  perhaps,  a  bore,  ow- 
ing in  great  measure  to  the  perfection  to  which  he 
has  carried  his  style,  which  tempts  him  to  apply  it 
to  the  decorative  presentment  of  wholly  trivial  sub- 
stance. And  in  France  when  a  man  is  a  bore  the 
fact  is  discovered  with  electric  promptitude.  And 
in  any  event,  bore  or  not,  the  raconteur  never  enjoys 
the  esteem  of  our  "good-story-teller,"  who  fre- 
quently possesses  not  merely  a  local  but  a  national 
reputation,  as  it  is  called.  The  introduction  of  the 
personal  note  is  distinctly  disagreeable.  The  force 
of  our  "  good-story-teller  "  though  always  personal 
is  often  histrionic,  and  the  French  have,  it  is  true,  a 


174  FRENCH   TRAITS 

talent  and  a  passion  for  acting.  But  even  in  act* 
ing  they  care  most  for  the  ensemble.  On  the  stage 
an  actor  who  should  force  his  part  into  the  fore- 
ground would  displease,  however  admirable  in  it- 
self his  performance  might  be.  And  in  actual  life 
the  social  comes  to  the  aid  of  the  artistic  instinct 
in  protecting  an  entire  company  from  resolving 
itself  into  a  lyceum  audience  and  an  amateur  lec- 
turer. 

French  conversation  thus  is  social  and  artistic 
first  of  all — never  personal  and  utilitarian.  Commu- 
nication being  its  end,  it  is  moreover  always  admir- 
ably clear^  Precision  is  as  eminent  a  characteristic 
of  spoken  as  of  written  French.  Each  nuance,  and 
nuances  abound,  is  unmistakable.  More  even  than 
by  its  grace  and  its  vivacity,  it  contrasts  with  our 
own  more  serious  conversation  in  absolute  exactness. 
The  exactness  is  in  expression  merely  ;  it  never  be- 
comes literal  and  exacting.  When  a  trivial  mistake 
is  made,  a  sophism  uttered,  a  person  or  thing  un- 
fairly ridiculed  or  ridiculously  praised,  the  French- 
man does  not  experience  the  temptation,  so  irresist- 
ible with  us,  to  set  wrong  right  at  any  expense  to 
the  conversation.  The  conversation  itself  is  the  ob- 
ject of  his  sohcitude.  Besides,  he  realizes  that  out  of 
the  pulpit  persiflage  is  as  potent  as  preaching.  His 
expei'tness  in  treating  serious  subjects  with  the 
light  touch  that  avoids  flippancy  has  its  moral  side 
as,  imitating  Carlyle's  obtuseness  about  Voltaire, 
we  are  slow  to  perceive.     With  us  it  is  the  essential 


MANNERS  175 

levity  of  the  subject  discussed  rather  than  a  deft  and 
lively  treatment  of  it  that  causes  the  superficial 
sparkle.  We  associate  the  two  things  so  closely  as 
to  infer  one  from  the  presence  of  the  other,  an  error 
which  French  clearness  avoids.  Hence  French 
conversation  is  far  freer  than  ours.  It  not  only 
compromises  no  personality,  and  essays  no  ulterior 
result,  but  its  scope  and  style  are  in  consequence 
very  extensive  and  very  varied.  It  has  terms  sum- 
ming up  phases  of  social  life,  to  characterize  which 
we  should  need  long  phrases,  and  employs  them  as 
counters,  as  bankers  do  checks  and  drafts  instead  of 
exchanging  coin.  It  tends  naturally  out  of  its  abun- 
dance to  include  topics  with  which  we  easily  dis- 
pense, in  mixed  company  at  all  events.  It  is  very 
outspoken  without  being  brutal.  It  makes,  indeed, 
such  a  specialty  of  suggestion  for  the  sake  of  the 
art  itself  as  sometimes  to  lose  all  sense  of  the  sub- 
stance suggested  ;  otherwise  at  least  some  allusions 
are  unaccountable.  And  this  freedom,  which  occa- 
sionally no  doubt  fringes  license — but  probably  less 
often  than  with  us  offends  the  proprieties  conven- 
tionally determined — helps  to  confer  the  great 
charm  of  naturalness  upon  French  intercourse. , 
One's  impulses  find  themselves  less  restrained  in 
being  more  explicitly  directed.  The  manner  is  as 
artificial  as  you  choose,  the  matter  is  apt  to  be  gen- 
uine and  to  lack  the  quality  which  constitutes  pose. 
On  a  high  level  and  in  a  rarefied  atmosphere  there 
is  far  more  naturalness  because  there  is  a  greater 


176  FRENCH  TRAITS 

sense  of  freedom  than  in  the  lower  regions,  amid 
denser  air,  in  which  the  sense  of  freedom  is  really 
the  lack  of  energy,  and  to  issue  out  of  which  demands 
discipline  and  attention. 

"  But  are  they  sincere  ?  "  is  the  universal  Anglo- 
Saxon  demand  in  reply  to  all  that  one  can  say  in 
characterization  of  French  manners  and  of  their  ar- 
ticulate manifestation  in  the  exquisite  art  of  French 
conversation.  On  this  point  we  are,  apparently,  all 
agreed.  Charming,  intelligent,  graceful,  everything 
else  you  will  that  is  admirable ;  at  that  vague 
quality  known  to  us  as  sincerity  we  draw  the  Une. 
A  recent  clever  book  makes  a  character  say  that 
"  French  sincerity  is  a  subject  he  never  cares  to 
enter  upon.  He  Ukes  too  many  French  people." 
That  is  the  utmost  concession  I  at  least  have  ever 
seen  made.  Yet  an  intelligent  observer  familiar 
vfith  the  French  must,  I  think,  whether  he  Hke  them 
or  not,  feel  disposed  to  plead  weariness  whenever  the 
time-honored  question  of  French  sincerity  is  mooted 
anew.  One  sympathizes  with  Hawthorne's  exasper- 
ation at  the  public  curiosity  concerning  the  ears 
of  his  Donatello.  In  this  instance  also  a  dehghtful 
and  dehcate  thing  is  being  brutally  treated.  The 
stupidity  is  carried  so  far  as  to  awaken  that  sense 
of  helpless  resentment  which  one  feels  in  the 
presence  of  wilful  wrongheadedness  on  a  large  scale 
among  intelligent  people.  The  truth  is  the  French 
are  as  sincere  as  any  other  people,  only  they  mani- 
fest the  virtue  in  their  own  way.     French  manners 


MANNERS  177 

include  a  great  deal  of  compliment,  and  compliment 
is  taken  literally  only  by  the  savage.  To  argue  in- 
dividual insincerity  from  the  perfection  which  com- 
pliment has  reached  among  the  French  is  like 
arguing  that  every  American  who  pays  his  bills 
in  silver  dollars  is  personally  corrupt.  Compliment 
is  merely  the  current  coin  of  the  French  social 
realm.  Nor  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  is  it  actually 
debased.  Very  slight  familiarity  with  French  com- 
pliment is  sufficient  to  enable  one  to  see  that  the 
French  sense  of  intellectual  self-respect  almost  in- 
variably prevents  them  from  trusting  solely  to  the  in- 
telligence of  the  complimented  for  a  complete  under- 
standing of  the  fact  that  the  accuracy  of  compliment 
is  not  that  of  algebra.  Somewhere  in  most  French 
compliments  you  are  sure  to  find  the  intellectual  cor- 
rective of  their  sensuous  charm.  Your  unfamiliarity 
with  this  circumstance  and  your  failure  to  notice 
it  may  lead  you  to  blush  at  the  moment  of  receiving 
a  genuine  French  compliment  yourself,  but  subse- 
quent reflection  is  apt  to  make  you  blush  at  having 
blushed ;  there  was  really,  you  will  infallibly  per- 
ceive, less  cause  for  confusion  than  you  imagined. 
Take,  for  example,  a  typical  compliment  by  a  char- 
acteristically courteous  and  sincere  Frenchman. 
During  a  visit  to  England  in  1868  the  late  Pr^vost- 
Paradol  was  received  "avec  ces  empressements 
flatteurs,"  says  a  French  writer,  "que  la  society 
anglaise  sait  si  bien  prodiguer  pour  peu  que 
Tenvie  lui  en  prenne  " — "  with  those  flattering  at- 
13 


178  FRENCH   TRAITS 

tentions  which  English  society  knows  so  well  how 
to  lavish  when  it  happens  to  take  a  notion  to  do  so." 
Ladies  contended  for  the  honor  of  being  taken  down 
to  dinner  by  the  brilliant  French  jovirnaUst.  The 
London  press  commenting  on  this  engouement,  and 
on  its  striking  contrast  with  the  lack  of  considera- 
tion manifested  for  Enghsh  journalists  of  equal 
parts,  called  attention  anew  to  the  important  role 
which  the  esteem  of  his  compatriots  permits  the 
French  journalist  personally  to  play  in  his  own  coun- 
try ; — to  which  the  Frenchman  naturally  replied  by 
a  compliment.  "Un  Fran9ais,"  said  he,  "a  rare- 
ment  une  passion  r^elle  pour  le  veritable  pouvoir 
ou  pour  la  fortune.  Son  ambition  vise  surtout  a 
la  reputation,  a  I'eloge,  a  I'espoir  de  donner  une 
haute  idee  de  lui  a  ses  concitoyens,  ou  meme  d  un 
cercle  etroit  de  familiers  ;  il  se  console  ais6ment  de 
bien  des  duboires  s'il  pent  croire  que  ceux  qui 
Tentovu-ent  le  considerent  comme  superieur  k  sa  for- 
tune. ...  II  donne  le  premier  rang  aux  plai- 
sirs  de  I'esprit ;  " — "  A  Frenchman  rarely  has  a 
sincere  passion  for  real  power  or  for  fortune.  His 
ambition  is  above  all  else  to  achieve  a  reputation,  to 
win  eulogiums,  to  succeed  in  giving  a  high  idea  of 
himself  to  his  fellow-citizens,  or  even  to  a  narrow 
circle  of  intimate  friends.  He  is  easily  consoled 
for  many  mortifications  if  he  can  convince  himself 
that  those  who  surround  him  consider  him  superior 
to  his  fortune.  He  gives  the  first  place  to  the 
pleasures  of  the  mind."    Fancy  the  audience   to 


MANNERS  179 

which  that  compliment  was  addressed  speculating 
as  to  its  sincerity  ! 

The  ti'uth  is  that  the  matter  of  personal  genuine- 
ness is  not  at  all  in  question.  So  far  as  sincerity  in 
compliment  is  concerned  it  depends  upon  the  spe- 
cific truth  or  falsity  of  the  words  employed  and 
their  impersonal  suggestion.  Of  course  the  French 
do  intrude  the  personal  equation  into  this  sphere  ; 
they  do  occasionally  endeavor  to  make  one  believe 
they  mean  what  they  say  in  a  special  and  intense 
sense  ;  the  phenomenon  is  not  absolutely  unknown. 
But  it  is  far  less  common  than  with  us  ;  and  it  in- 
vai'iably  denotes  in  the  practitioner  a  lower  grade  of 
person.  The  large  part  played  by  the  emotions  in 
our  activities  of  this  kind  causes  us  to  regard  the 
passage  from  compliment  to  flattery  as  venial  when- 
ever the  heart  is  in  the  right  place.  The  circum- 
stance that  compliment  is  in  France  a  fine-art  makes 
the  same  error  there  far  more  grave,  and  conse- 
quently far  less  frequent.  It  becomes  a  sign  of 
grossihrete — which  is  the  French  unpardonable  sin. 
■^v^  *  Furthermore  the  French  compliment  never  means 
more  than  it  says.  The  national  turn  for  intelli- 
gence serves  as  a  great  safeguard  for  sincerity  here, 
whereas  if  we  examine  closely  our  own  way  of  allow- 
ing the  heart  to  dictate  to  the  judgment,  we  cannot 
fail  to  see  how  inexact  our  sincerity  often  becomes. 
The  Frenchman  if  he  wishes  to  compliment  you  will 
select  some  point  about  you  that  will  bear  it.  His 
language  regarding  this  may  at  first  (and,  as  I  have 


180  FRENCH  TRAITS 

indicated,  only  at  first)  seem  exaggerated,  but  the 
basis  of  it  will  be  sound^  ,^-  With  us  in  sincere  in- 
stances the  process  is  this :  a  genuine  esteem  pre- 
cedes the  desire  to  please  ;  the  desire  to  please  takes 
the  form  of  an  expression  of  this  general  feeling  of 
esteem  ;  this  form  itself  has  nothing  more  to  do 
with  the  facts  it  states  than  had  the  compliant  ad- 
missions of  Polonius  to  Hamlet,  "  very  like  a  whale," 
"  it  is  backed  like  a  weasel " — which  furnish  a  not 
bad  illustration  indeed  of  our  ordinary  form  of  com- 
pliment, all  question  of  Polonius's  fundamental  sin- 
cerity, of  course,  aside. 

The  foreigner's  notion  that  the  French  "  do  every- 
thing with  an  air  "  is  perfectly  sound.  The  author 
of  "Living  Paris,"  who  is  an  unusually  liberal  ob- 
server, adds  that  "  they  do  it  all  the  same."  This  is 
quite  true.  If  there  was  ever  a  practical  and  posi- 
tive people  under  the  sun  it  is  the  French.  But  it 
answers  only  an  elementary  vulgar  error,  A  more 
plausible  yet  equally  erroneous  notion  is  that  this 
"  air  "  is  affected  and  theatrical.  Theatrical  it  may 
sometimes  become  in  that  excess  which  is  unconge- 
nial to  the  French  character  and  therefore  rare. 
But  the  noticeable  thing  about  it  is  that  it  is  not 
theatrical  Such  poses,  tones,  and  gesture  as  are 
common  to  our  stage  and  occasionally  overflow  into 
so  opposite  a  place  as  our  pulpit  would  excite 
amazement  at  a  thedtre  de  banlieue.  Dramatic  is 
the  true  epithet  for  that  systematization  of  expres- 
sion noticeable  in  the  French.      The  "  air  "  with 


MANNERS  181 

which  they  do  everything  has  nothing  of  ill -regu- 
lated emotion  in  it ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  it 
often  characterized  by  that  sensuous  magic  insepara- 
ble from  Italian  native  grace.  It  is  in  nowise  senti- 
mental ;  it  is  simply  expressive.  It  may  be  more  or 
less  ornate,  now  structural,  now  decorative,  as  indi- 
viduals differ.  But  what  is  to  be  noted  is  that  it  is 
invariably  the  "  air  "  which  the  individual  deems  ap- 
propriate, and  that  fitness  is  his  sole  criterion.  The 
reason  for  our  failure  to  perceive  this  is  that  in  every 
serious  matter  we  rely  on  the  impression  produced 
by  personal  character  to  convey  its  importance  to 
the  listener  or  spectator.  The  more  weighty  the 
substance  the  more  condensed  the  statement,  the 
more  poetic  the  theme  the  balder,  or  at  least  the 
briefer,  its  expression.  In  fine  our  idea  of  expres- 
sion is  repression.  We  appeal  to  the  imagination, 
not  to  the  sense  or  the  reason.  We  find  the  French 
"  air  "  theatrical  instead  of  logically  and  aptly  dra- 
matic, because  our  ideal  is  to  have  no  "  air  "  at  all. 
We  are  egoists,  not  artists  ;  it  is  not  what  we  say  or 
do  that  we  wish  to  count,  but  ourselves. 

Hence  manifestly  the  confusion  of  which  we  are 
guilty  in  accusing  the  French  of  affectation  at  the 
same  time  that  we  speak  of  them  as  naturally  theat- 
rical. But  they  are  no  more  affected  than  they  are 
theatrical.  By  our  exaltation  of  character  over  man- 
ners, by  our  adjusting  of  manners  to  personal  expres- 
sion, by  our  sentimental  and  inartistic  substitution 
of  a  thoroughly  contained  and  intense  air  for  the  nat- 


182  FRENCH   TRAITS 

ural  and  spontaneous  one  which  fits  the  thought,  we 
are  in  far  graver  peiil  from  this  subtle  foe  than  is 
the  Frenchman,  whose  manner  alone,  at  any  rate,  is 
attacked  and  whose  character  escapes.  Tell  over 
scrupulously  the  list  of  your  friends,  American  oi 
English.  How  many  of  them  are  there  who  do  not 
affect  some  character  or  other,  some  moral  role  for- 
eign to  their  native  disposition,  with  which  their 
eflfort  to  harmonize  their  demeanor  is  quite  as  ob- 
vious as  it  is  successful  ?  In  one's  own  case  this  may 
be  aspiration,  but  in  that  of  others  it  is  invariably 
affectation.  And  the  attempt  to  impose  it  results  in 
a  kind  of  pervasive  and  general  hypocrisy  beside 
which  the  explicit  and  definite  cafardise  of  the 
French  has  the  merit  of  being  a  frank  foe.  In 
France  a  man's  valuation  of  himself  is  much  more 
nearly  that  which  his  friends  set  upon  him.  Even 
in  the  French  manner  what  we  mistake  for  affecta- 
tion is  merely  intention.  To  bring  all  one's  physi- 
cal activities  into  the  sphere  of  culture  and  reason, 
to  suit  the  gesture  to  the  word  and  the  word  to  the 
thought,  to  stand  and  walk  and  sit  decorously,  to 
enter  a  room,  to  bow  to  a  lady,  to  carry  on  a  tete-^ 
tete,  or  share  a  general  conversation,  to  avoid  con- 
troversy, to  attain  repose — to  do  all  this  respectably 
requires  intention.  So  far  as  communities  are  con- 
cerned fine  natural  manners  are  a  myth,  but  this 
probably  does  not  prevent  the  Sioux  and  Apaches 
from  considering  our  manners  artificial,  or  us  from 
finding  affectation  in  those  of  the  French,  owing  to 


MANNERS  183 

the  distinctness  which  unfamiliarity  gives  to  inten- 
tion in  either  instance,  and  to  the  failure  in  each 
case  to  appreciate  the  importance  of  intention  in 
everything  of  importance. 

In  fine  the  vulgar  mistrust  of  French  sincerity  is 
based  on  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  fact  that 
French  manners  are  studied,  artificial,  conventional, 
which  does  not  of  course  mean  that  they  are  of 
necessity  inelastic  or  excessive  or  superficial,  but 
that  the  French  put  the  same  intention  into  manners 
that  all  civilized  peoples  do  into  language,  and  have 
systematized  them  with  the  same  care  for  correctness 
on  the  one  hand  and  pliability  on  the  other.  We 
have  no  exactly  equivalent  word  for  what  the  French 
call  tenue,  and  if  we  have  exactly  the  thing,  it  is  in- 
finitely less  developed  and  less  nearly  universal  than 
in  France,  where  it  is  as  characteristic  of  manners  as 
are  the  impersonal  and  artistic  spirit.  Tenue  means 
restraint,  order,  measure,  style,  consciousness,  in- 
tention in  demeanor  and  bearing.  Owing  to  his  nat- 
ural turn  for  these  qualities  the  Frenchman  is  rarely 
tempted  to  permit  himself  indiscretions.  He  is  not 
solicited  by  whimsical  impulses.  He  has  no  desire 
for  relaxation,  and  does  not  chafe  under  restraint. 
It  is  not  difficult  for  him  to  feel  at  ease  in  an  erect 
posture ;  he  supports  the  greater  muscular  tension 
involved  with  less  evident  fatigue  ;  his  hands  do  not 
automatically  seek  his  trousers'  pockets  nor  his  knees 
cross  one  another.  Consciousness  and  self-conscious- 
ness are  not  identical  terms  to  him.     Nor  does  the 


184  FRENCH   TRAITS 

artificiality  of  the  drawing-room  atmosphere  oppress 
him  and  entice  him  into  mistaking  buffoonery  for 
the  talismanic  touch  of  thawing  nature,  into  spas- 
modic laughter,  into  long  stories,  into  that  amuse- 
ment of  the  ensemble,  which  involves  neglect  of  the 
members,  of  the  company.  Of  course  perfect  breed- 
ing is  perfect  breeding  the  world  over.  But  the  per- 
fectly bred  man  is  bom,  not  bred,  if  the  paradox 
may  be  permitted.  The  mass  of  mankind  have  no 
more  genius  for  manners  than  for  tight-rope  danc- 
ing, but  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the  mass  of  Frenchmen 
have  a  talent  for  them  in  adding  a  talent  for  tenue  to 
the  social  and  the  artistic  instincts. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  any  bourgeois  inte- 
rior the  entire  absence  of  form  characteristic  of  many 
of  our  own  average  homes.  Not  that  in  moments — 
or  hours — of  mutual  ennui  and  common  delassement, 
the  average  bourgeois  interior  does  not,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  pure  form,  leave  something  to  be  de- 
sired. But,  in  seasons  of  entire  sanity,  the  respec- 
tive shapes  expansiveness  takes  in  a  French  home 
and  in  one  of  our  own  differ  prGdigiously.  Take  a 
large  French  family  reunion.  Few  social  pictures 
are  prettier.  There  is  very  likely  an  entire  absence 
of  that  hearty  familiarity  which  characterizes  our 
Thanksgiving  or  Christmas  gatherings.  The  chil- 
dren do  not  romp,  the  grown  people  do  not  appear 
as  if  at  last  the  moment  had  come  when  all  outward 
restraint  and  formality  could  be  thrown  aside  with  a 
clear  conscience.     The  visitors  do  not  "make  them- 


MANNERS  185 

selves  perfectly  at  home,"  the  hosts  do  not  invite 
them  to  do  so,  or  treat  them  as  if  such  were  the  case. 
There  is  everywhere  perfectly  apparent  the  French 
veneer  of  artificial  courtesy.  Children  are  treated 
with  politeness  and  not  hugged  ;  babies  are  banish- 
ed— are  generally,  in  fact,  in  a  state  of  chronic  exile ; 
if  at  times  everyone  is  talking  at  once  it  is  evidently 
because  of  the  social  desire  to  contribute  to  the  con- 
versation, rather  than  because  of  the  unsocial  dis- 
position to  neglect  one's  neighbor's  appreciations — 
an  abysmal  difference  in  itself ;  there  are  no  uncom- 
fortable silences  passed  in  simply  "  sitting  'round  " 
and  cudgelling  one's  brains  as  to  what  to  do  next ; 
the  great  art  and  enjoyment  of  social  life  being  con- 
versation— exchange  of  ideas,  or  notions,  original  or 
trite,  but  always  cast  in  more  or  less  careful  form — 
games  are  far  seldomer  than  among  us  resorted  to 
as  a  substitute,  and  being  invariably  for  money 
probably  owe  their  popularity  to  the  ingrained  French 
disposition  toward  avarice ;  an  avarice  which  always 
seems  curious  to  us  but  about  which  in  its  milder 
manifestations  there  is  never  any  concealment. 
Games  themselves  are  never  conducted  in  silence. 
The  solemn  stillness  that  with  us  accompanies  the 
rubber  of  whist  which  is  more  and  more  tending  to 
become,  even  as  played  by  the  young  and  frivolous, 
a  tremendously  serious  thing,  and  which  indicates 
clearly  that  the  game  is  an  end  in  itself  and  not  a 
pastime,  is  unknown  outside  the  clubs  in  France. 
An  occasional  old  gentleman,  who  when  the  stakes 


186  FRENCH  TRAITS 

are  high  insists  on  a  subordination  of  talk  and  vig- 
orously represses  his  partner's  tendency  to  discursive- 
ness, is  voted  a  nuisance.  Naturally  thus,  there  is 
nowhere  to  be  seen,  perhaps,  such  wretched  whist- 
playing  as  in  French  salons. 

Universally  in  French  interiors  an  American  per- 
/  ceives  at  once  the  absence  of  effort  at  "  entertaining 
/  people,"  in  our  phrase.  The  entertainment  is  a  phe- 
nomenon spontaneously  generated  when  people  come 
together.  The  various  social  amusements  are  cer- 
tainly cultivated  ;  dancing  and  singing  £ind  the  piano 
are,  of  course,  merely  subordinated,  not  suppressed 
— one  cannot  converse  forever.  -^  But  dancing  is  no- 
where the  passion  that  it  is  with  us  ;  if  it  were,  the 
French,  who  dance  detestably,  would  perhaps  dance 
better.  People  dance,  but  then,  also,  occasionally, 
they  desist  from  dancing  ;  in  the  cotillion  the  pretti- 
ness  of  the  figure  occupies  much  more  attention  than 
its  duration.  As  for  music  the  French  are  decidedly 
ahead  of  us.  They  already  very  generally  recognize 
the  caricature  which  ordinary  amateur  effort  is ;  they 
are  well  known  to  have  far  less  respect  than  our  race 
for  what  bores  them  ;  and  now  that  so  much  pro- 
fessional effort  is  had  at  soirees  they  have  become  ex- 
acting and  only  extraordinary  amateur  skill  is  toler- 
ated. As  for  our  readings,  Browning  societies,  and 
in  general  the  class  of  literary  entertainment  pi'o- 
vided  by  the  thousands  of  provincial  and  rural 
"sociables"  from  one  end  of  our  country  to  the 
other — many   of  these   half-acknowledged  pisaUers 


MANNERS  187 

would  seem  grotesque  to  the  most  long-suffering 
Latin  ;  in  France,  esi)ecially,  elocution  and  erudition, 
general  and  special  information  and  all  cognate 
acquirements  ai-e  taken  seriously^^^i,JPlie  end  and 
aim  of  society  is  in  fact  simply  human  intercourse, 
decorated  with  infinite  variety  but  never  needing  to 
be  buttressed — recognized  as  a  natural  satisfaction 
of  a  profound  instinct  and  needing  no  extraneous 
stimulus,  only  a  careful  and  elaborate  development 
and  ordering.    ,^ 

This  ordering  necessarily  results  in  uniformity  of 
manners,  and  uniformity  is  as  foreign  to  our  manners 
as  is  the  impersonal,  artistic,  or  conventional  spirit. 
But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  uniformity  of  manners 
is  a  great  humanizer.  It  is  perhaps  the  simplest 
means  of  bringing  persons  of  different  idiosyncra- 
sies into  sympathetic  relations.  Our  own  diversity 
is  grotesque  and  is  responsible  for  much  estrange- 
ment between  our  different  sections.  A  Chicago 
journal,  for  example,  treating  of  courtship,  apos- 
trophizes plaintively  '*  the  turned-down  light,  the 
single  chair,"  but  it  would  be  idle  to  pretend  that 
the  milieu  thus  briefly  characterized  is  congenial  to 
all  of  us.  As  yet  Avith  us  every  man  is  his  own 
Chesterfield.  We  have  individuals  with  the  charm 
which  in  Emerson  struck  Carlyle  as  elaborate,  not 
to  say  excessive.  We  have  the  average  rural  New 
Engiander  whom  Emerson  found  j)icturesque,  but 
whose  charm  is  distinctly  not  excessive.  We  have 
the  entire  gamut  run  by  the  Southron  describing  a 


188  FRENCH  TRAITS 

dinner  party  composed  to  his  sense  of  "  an  elegant 
gentleman  from  Virginia,  a  gentleman  from  Ken- 
tucky, a  man  from  Ohio,  a  fellow  from  New  York, 
and  a  galoot  from  Boston."  Our  society  thus  has 
the  advantage  of  not  being  monotonous  to  the  artist ; 
but  the  dead  level  of  steel  rails  has  this  superiority 
over  the  interesting  diversity  of  corduroy  roads  that 
it  makes  travel  easier  and  arrival  more  hopeful. 
The  avoidance  of  friction  secured  is  incalculably  de- 
lightful. The  social  machinery  so  scrupulously 
attended  to  runs  far  more  smoothly  than  ours,  which 
we  imagine  will  quite  take  care  of  itself  if  we  fulfil 
the  condition  that  made  such  a  carver  of  men's  cas- 
ques of  the  sword  and  such  a  sure-thruster  of  the 
lance  of  the  pure-hearted  Sir  Galahad.  No  French- 
man to  whom  you  talk  punctuates  your  sentences 
with  an  eager  and  admonitory  "  yes,  yes,  yes."  Nor 
does  appreciation  of  his  own  wit  or  of  yours  involve 
distracting  excursions.  Nor  does  he  show  you 
plainly  how  hard  it  is  for  him  to  wait  till  you  have 
finished,  or  let  his  attention  wander,  or  try  to  save 
time  by  the  surreptitious  reading  of  a  letter  or  a 
glance  at  a  newspaper  heading,  or  indicate  in  any 
way  as  so  many  of  us  do,  the  manner  varying  with 
individual  character,  that  conversation  is  not  the 
most  important  affair  in  the  world.  He  knows  that 
for  the  moment  it  is. 

On  the  other  hand  susceptibilities  escape  wound- 
ing with  a  completeness  that  seems  as  wonderful  as 
the  means  by  which  it  is  secured  is  seen  to  be  simple. 


MANNERS  189 

In  PYacce  it  is  in  the  first  place  bad  manners  to  be  too 
susceptible  ;  in  the  second  place  it  is  a  mark  of  that 
conceit  always  ascribed  to  a  lack  of  intelligence;  in 
the  third  place  one's  susceptibility  is  justly  wounded 
only  when  an  offence  has  been  committed  against  the 
code  of  manners.  These  sound  like  commonplaces. 
But  they  are  practically  not  accepted  by  us.  Practi- 
cally we  believe  in  "taking  no  offence  where  none  is 
intended  ; "  and  we  really  think  that  when  the  social 
code  of  the  Golden  Age  comes  to  be  discovered,  this 
will  be  found  to  have  been  its  spirit  too.  On  the 
contrary  giving  unintentionally  just  ground  for 
offence  is  precisely  what  the  French  find  it  impossible 
to  support.  Provided  with  a  conventional  and  uni- 
form code,  they  concentrate  their  attention  upon  the 
grossi^rete — to  them  the  most  repugnant  quality  in 
the  world — of  the  offence,  and  whether  or  no  it  be 
accompanied  by  design,  by  malhonnetet^,  is  a  sub- 
ordinate consideration.  Accompanied  by  malhon- 
netete  it  may  or  may  not  be,  but  aggravated  by  it  or 
by  anything,  it  cannot.  In  this  way  the  French 
avoid  the  habit  so  prevalent  with  us  of  always  seek- 
ing the  motive  of  everyone's  speech  or  behavior  and 
the  suspicion,  the  morbid  sensitiveness,  which  is  the 
inevitable  result  of  this  habit.  So  long  as  the  con- 
venances remain  undisturbed  people's  motives  are 
assumed  to  be  amiable.  It  is  our  notion  on  the  con- 
trary that  observance  of  conventions  can  mean  very 
little,  and  our  own  experience,  in  fact,  teaches  us 
that  they  are  often   extremely  deceptive  indices  of 


190  FRENCH  TRAITS 

both  the  feelings  and  the  character.  So  long, 
accordingly,  as  we  are  sure  that  a  person  is  well- 
disposed  and  worthy,  he  may,  within  certain  ill-de- 
fined limits,  say  and  do  what  he  chooses  ;  so  long  as 
we  ai-e  convinced  that  right  feeling  presides  at  their 
sacrifice  our  solicitude  for  conventions  ceases.  We 
do  not  in  this  way  reach  much  eminence  in  what  is 
strictly  defined  as  civility,  but  that  is  a  common- 
place which  does  not  greatly  disturb  us  ;  we  readily 
reconcile  ourselves  to  the  impeachment ;  we  easily 
console  ourselves  with  the  notion  that  we  possess 
what  is  far  more  important  and  perhaps  after  all 
inconsistent  with  that  "  outward  grace  "  which  Mr. 
Lowell  assures  us  we  know  to  be  but  "dust"  But 
this  attitude  compels  us  to  be  continually  "  making 
allowances"  for  people  who  .are,  though  kind,  still 
uncouth  or  inconsiderate  ;  and  uncouthness  and 
inconsiderateness,  are,  however  tolerable,  nowhere 
agreeable  qualities  in  a  positive  sense.  And  one 
cannot  continually  "make  allowances"  or  have 
them  made  for  him  without  great  detriment  to  his 
dignity.  Consequently  we  do  feel  a  vague  discom- 
fort, which  the  French  with  their  concentration  on 
the  dust  of  outward  grace  are  spared,  in  a  hundred 
more  or  less  trifling  details  of  social  intercourse. 
And  occasionally,  when  an  individual  of  either  of  the 
two  great  branches  of  our  race  contemplates  such 
an  individual  of  the  other  as  chance  may  be  trusted 
now  and  then  to  bring  into  contact  with  him — in  en- 
counters  of   this  sort   with   which  every   travelled 


MANNERS  191 

American  or  Englisliman  is  familiar,  scales  seem  to 
fall  from  his  eyes.  French  manners  appear  trans- 
figured to  him.  Mere  "  outward  grace  "  rises  pro- 
digiously in  his  esteem.  Few  cultivated  EngHshmeu 
probably  have  escaped  a  shock  when  subjected  for 
the  first  time  to  the  unrestrained  familiaiity  and  the 
empty-headed  efifusiveness  characteristic  of  many  of 
our  compatriots.  Few  Americans  probably  have 
not  flushed  with  a  sense  of  outrage  at  the  tactless 
incivility  of  the  worthy  but  forbidding  Briton.  The 
American  "  drummer  "  narrating  his  experiences  and 
making  his  "  effect  "  at  a  Continental  table  d'hote,  and 
the  English  lady  opposite  him  visibly  wondering  how 
he  can  eat  butter  with  hot  meats  and  carefully  mani- 
festing an  exaggerated  disgust  in  consequence,  tend, 
for  example,  to  excite  in  each  other  a  feeling  of  tol- 
eration for  manners  as  the  French  conceive  them — 
manners  which  in  seasons  of  calmer  weather  they 
find  excessive. 

Nothing,  however,  could  be  more  erroneous  than 
the  popular  Anglo-Saxon  notion  that  French  man- 
ners are  excessive.  Like  all  our  notions  about  the 
French  this  is  with  us  an  inheritance.  English 
manners  are  in  general  reserved,  brusque,  embar- 
rassed perhaps  in  reality,  if  you  choose  to  examine 
into  the  real  nature  of  puerilities,  but  superficially — 
that  is  to  say  in  the  sole  sphere  of  their  action — 
splenetic,  bald,  absurdly  uncivilized  as  manifested 
toward  strangers,  and  characterized  in  intimacy  by 
what  Emerson  calls  "unbuttoned  ease."     By  force 


192  FRENCH   TRAITS 

of  contrast  French  manners  are  bound  to  appear  ex- 
cessive to  Englishmen.  Positively  speaking,  of  all 
possible  qualities  that  of  excess  is  the  most  foreign 
to  French  demeanor  as  it  is  to  the  French  mind. 
The  Italian  manner  is  excessive,  if  you  choose — and 
are  ill-natured  enough  to  mention  it  And  curi- 
ously enough  our  own  and  that  of  the  English — 
when  any  value  is  attached  to  it,  when  account  is 
really  taken  of  it,  when  we  wish  to  be  "especially 
polite,"  as  the  singular  phrase  is — may  certainly  be 
thus  described.  But  French  manners  are  saved 
from  excess  by  the  very  fact  that  they  are  so  thor- 
oughly conventional  Nowhere  is  convention  more 
esteemed,  although  nowhere  are  its  terms  more  ela* 
tic.  Nowhere,  as  one  has  occasion  to  remark  there 
at  every  turn,  is  a  given  convention  so  frankly  ac- 
cepted as  the  formulated  opinion  of  mankind  con- 
cerning the  subject  of  it.  To  dispute  it,  to  advance 
individual  notions  in  modification  of  it,  is  clearly 
regarded  as  more  maif  than  even  courageous.  That 
"  common  consent  of  mankind  "  which  certain  mor- 
alists make  the  arbiter  in  ethics  is  in  France  ap- 
plied to  almost  every  conceivable  act  of  man  with  an 
elaborateness  and  system  that  rival  those  of  the 
Code  Napoleon  itself.  Nowhere,  perhaps,  outside 
the  precincts  of  the  Court  of  Castile,  is  etiquette, 
that  codified  system  of  manners,  carried  so  far  ;  no- 
where is  an  offence  against  it  more  quickly  noticed. 
Violations  of  it  are  readily  excused  if  justifiable ; 
there  is  no  pedantry :  there  is  even  a  special  inter- 


MANNERS  193 

est  exhibited  in  originalitc — a  word  whicli  it  is  sig- 
nificant tliat  we  Lave  to  render  by  eccentricity. 
But  violations  are  invariably  remarked  and  the 
proper  deduction  made  therefrom. 

Nevertheless,  etiquette  itself  being  not  a  court  af- 
fair but  something  thoroughly  understood  and  prac- 
tised by  eveiybody,  French  manners  are  thereby 
saved  from  excess,  as  they  are  from  every  other 
form  of  eccentricity.  They  strike  one,  rather,  as 
being  almost  business-like  ;  at  any  rate  their  design 
is  clearly  to  remove  friction  as  well  as  to  decorate 
intercourse.  The  "  grimacing  dancing-master,"  the 
"  bowing  and  scraping "  simply  do  not  exist ;  not 
because  the  French  are  incapable  of  such  insincere 
artificiality,  but  because  they  do  not  like  it.  It  does 
not  seem  to  them  a  good  thing  in  itself.  The  de- 
gree to  which  they  have  carried  the  evolution  of 
manners  has  left  it  far  behind.  It  is  an  offence 
against  measure  and  it  is  undemocratic — either  cir- 
cumstance being  enough  to  condemn  it  in  French 
esteem.  In  Peking,  doubtless,  the  French  manner 
would  seem  meagre.  In  Virginia,  "before  the  war," 
the  Frenchman  would  certainly  have  found  much  in 
that  courtly  and  elaborate  bearing  of  which  we  still 
read  in  Southern  literature  and  of  which  we  observe 
the  majestic  remains  whenever  a  Southern  orator 
delivers  a  set  speech,  which  would  have  seemed  to 
him  Oriental.  Indeed,  one  may  remark  in  passing, 
Claverhouse  himself  would  have  been  greatly  sur- 
prised at  the  abundance  of  manner  in  the  "de- 
13 


194  FRENCH  TRAITS 

scendants  of  the  cavaliers."  The  grandiose  is  al- 
most never  to  be  encountered  in  France — except  in 
art  or  literature  where  it  is  sought  of  set  purpose 
and  expressly,  as  who  should  say  "  let  us  now  in- 
tone instead  of  simply  speaking."  On  the  other 
hand  the  sincerely  familiar  manner,  that  manner 
which  is  the  absolute  absence  of  manner,  is  quite  as 
uncommon.  Drop  into  the  little  stuffy  hall  in  the 
Boulevard  des  Capucines  of  a  Thursday  evening, 
and  hsten  to  one  of  M.  Fraucisque  Sarcey's  charm- 
ing conferences  on  the  stage,  on  poetry,  on  literature. 
M.  Sarcey's  manner  is  admirably  free  from  pose  of 
any  kind  ;  it  passes  in  Paris  for  the  manner  suited 
to  a  bonhomie  almost,  if  not  quite,  hourgeoise.  It  is 
familiar  in  a  sense  unknown  to  our  lyceum  ;  M. 
Sarcey,  who  is  in  the  first  place  seated,  stops  over  a 
citation  to  laugh  or  admire  with  his  auditors  :  oc- 
casionally one  of  these  hazards  a  suggestion  to 
which  the  conferencier  bows  agi'eement  or  shrugs 
dissent ;  one  is  almost  enfamille.  But  the  family  is 
clearly  a  French  family.  There  is  no  relaxation, 
no  unbending,  no  flaccid  abandon.  Of  familiar- 
ity as  we  understand  the  term  and  as  we  illustrate 
it  on  the  rostrum,  as  well  as  in  the  "  back-store," 
there  is  none  at  all.  Quite  as  watchful  a  guard  is 
kept  over  the  moral  muscles  as  if  the  occasion  were 
a  wholly  different  one.  M.  Sarcey  and  his  auditors 
are  as  much  on  "dress-parade,"  as  we  sometimes 
say  of  this  attitude,  as  the  soldiers  at  a  Longchamps 
review.       They    have    simply,    morally     speaking, 


MANNERS  195 

learned  so  well  to  use  tlieir  faculties  by  the  Labit 
which  is  a  second  nature,  that  that  first  nature  which 
as  Pascal  observed  is  perhaps  only  a  first  habit, 
seems  to  tliem  rudimentary  rather  than  specifically 
natural,  as  it  appears  to  us.  Suppose — if  such  a 
thing  can  bo  supposed — M.  Sarcey  forming  one  of 
the  late  Mr.  Beecher's  audience  at  Plymouth  Church 
on  a  Sunday  morning.  Tlio  time,  the  place,  the 
theme  are  sacred,  but  he  would  be  certain  to  find  a 
lack  of  correspondence  between  this  fact  and  the 
manners  of  the  occasion — he  would  be  sure  to  es- 
teem unfair  any  criticism  of  French  manners  as  ex- 
cessive which  should  be  based  on  the  standard 
there  confronting  and  surrounding  him.  He  would 
be  sure,  on  the  other  hand,  to  find  excess  in  the  oc- 
casion's absence  of  tenue.  He  would  reflect :  "  Our 
manner  is  business-like  rather  than  Italian  ;  it  is  di- 
rect rather  than  rococo.  We  are  familiar,  we  are 
free,  we  are  frank,  we  are  gay  ;  but  we  are  not  gay 
Hke  that" 

Finally,  French  manners  are  gentle.  A  certain 
mildness  of  demeanor,  which  is,  among  us,  mainly 
confined  to  such  individuals  as  do  not  fear  the  con- 
sequences of  failure  in  self-assertion,  is  everywhere 
observable.  The  fiercely  mustachioed  concierge 
shares  it  with  the  bland  academician.  It  is  the 
rarest  imaginable  chance  to  hear  an  oath.  There  is 
something  feeble  and  inefiicient,  an  acknowledgment 
of  inarticulateness,  about  the  intenser  sort  of  exple- 
tives, which  are  wholly  foreign  to  the  French  tern- 


196  FRENCH  TRAITS 

per,  accustomed  to  perfect  facility  and  adequacy  of 
expression.  Similarly  with  slang.  French  argot  is 
almost  a  language  by  itself.  Slang  as  we  compre- 
hend the  term,  and  as  Walt  Whitman  eulogizes  and 
employs  it — namely,  as  the  riotous  medium  of  the 
under-languaged,  is  unknown.  One  may  in  a  week 
hear  more  oaths  and  more  slang  of  the  coarse  and 
stupid  sort  in  Wall  Street,  at  the  seaside,  in  the 
hotel  corridors  and  street-cars  and  along  the  side- 
walks of  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  say,  and  in 
public  generally  among  us  than  in  the  length  and 
breadth  of  France  in  a  year.  There  is  not  the  same 
burlesque  of  "  heartiness,"  the  same  slapping  on  the 
back,  the  same  insistent  invitations  to  drink,  the 
same  brutcUite  ;  in  fine  there  is  infinitely  more  gen- 
tleness. Their  occasional  savagery  strikes  us  as  in- 
effective and  amateur,  their  fury  seems  fustian. 
The  "  rapier-thrusts  "  of  sarcasm,  the  kind  of  writ- 
ing and  talking  to  which  some  of  our  newspapers 
apply  their  most  eulogistic  epithet,  "  scathing,"  the 
bitter  banter  to  which  not  a  few  of  the  best  bred  of 
our  young  girls  seem  just  now  especially  addicted 
would  excite  amazement  in  France.  Persiflage, 
there,  is  never  personal  when  it  is  not  also  good- 
natured.  In  any  event  there  is  far  less  of  it  than 
of  compliment ;  and  this  compliment  is  less  facti- 
tious than  are  our  personalities  of  the  uncompli- 
mentary kind.  The  difference  shows  an  important 
temperamental  distinction  as  well  as  anything  can. 
The  French  are  as  inclined  to  the  amiable,  the  agree 


MANNERS  197 

able,  the  social,  the  impersonal  as  we  are  to  avoid 
being  the  dupe  of  these  qualities  ;  perhaps  they  are 
less  duped  than  we  are,  and  at  any  rate  the  amount 
of  fruitless  friction  which  they  save  over  us  is  very 
great.  Indeed  with  us  this  friction  grows  by  natu- 
ral selection  ;  it  is  popular  because,  conscious  of  im- 
mense kindliness  at  bottom  and  our  own  withers  be- 
ing for  the  moment  unwrung,  we  like  to  see  the 
galled  jade  wince.  The  Chamber  of  Deputies  is 
sometimes  a  bear  garden,  and  the  air  is  thick  with 
denunciation,  but  such  a  speech  as  Mr.  Blaine's 
famous  characterization  of  Mr.  Conkling  or  Mr. 
Conkling's  of  Mr.  Curtis  was  never  heard  there.  In 
private  life  there  is  more  refined  malice,  more  gayety, 
and  more  gossip — if  possible — in  a  Paris  salon  than 
in  a  Fifth  Avenue  drawing-room,  or  on  a  Newport 
piazza  ;  but  there  is  nothing  of  what  we  have  come 
to  know  as  personal  "rallying,"  and  the  gossip  is 
about  the  absent. 

We,  on  the  other  hand,  are  all  familiar,  Mr.  Ar- 
nold reminds  us,  with  the  notion  of  "  hewing  Agag 
in  pieces,"  and  our  ungentleness  of  manners  pro- 
ceeds largely  from  the  astonishing  way  in  which 
this  Teutonic  and  Puritan  passion  has  penetrated 
our  very  nature.  How  English  literature  witnesses 
this  from  the  time  of  !MiIton  to  the  very  latest  number 
of  "  The  Saturday  Review  "  we  all  know.  The  great- 
est and  kindliest  natures  are  not  exempt  from  it  on 
the  other  side  of  the  water.  Not  only  does  Ma- 
caulay  riot  in  it,   but  such  a  good-natured  soul  aa 


198  FRENCH   TRAITS 

Mr.  James  Yellowplush  indulges  in  many  a  swing  of 
the  axe — when  Agag  is  for  the  moment  personated 
by  Bulwer,  let  us  say.  Not  only  is  the  hewing  done 
with  the  grandiose  strokes  of  Carlylean  brutality, 
but  it  is  amiably  and  dexterously  performed  by  the 
advocate  par  excellence  of  *'  sweet  reasonableness  " 
and  the  chief  critic  of  the  custom,  Mr.  Matthew  Ar- 
nold himself.  The  description  of  Mr.  Swinburne  as 
"sitting  in  a  sewer  and  adding  to  it,"  attributed  to 
Carlyle,  differs  mainly  by  its  outrageousness  from  the 
implacable  way  in  which  a  long  catalogue  of  saints 
and  sinners  is  subjected  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Arnold 
to  an  illumination  as  indiscreet  as  it  is  discriminat- 
ing. There  is  much  discussion  as  to  whether  it  is  as 
a  ci'itic  or  a  poet  that  he  will  appeal  to  "the  next 
ages,"  but  there  is  a  side  of  his  admirable  and  ele- 
vated genius  in  virtue  of  which  it  is  not  difficult  oc- 
casionally to  fancy  him  gracing  the  Pantheon  of  the 
future  in  the  harmonious  guise  of  Apollo  fla^ang 
Marsyas.  No  Anglo  Saxon  would  wish  llklr.  Arnold 
different,  but  it  is  worth  pointing  out  that  the  re- 
spectably sized  and  felicitously  executed  "  Dunciad  " 
which  might  be  collected  from  his  works  is  incon- 
testably  due  to  the  personal  attitude,  the  personal 
way  of  looking  at  many  questions  and  discussing 
many  subjects.  His  gentleness  in  consequence  is 
rather  express  than  ingrained,  and  now  and  then 
has  something  feline  in  its  velvety  caress. 

In  this  country,  I  think,  we  are  less  disposed  to 
censoriousness.     At  any  rate  our  more  refined  spir- 


MANNERS  109 

its  are — from  the  various  reasons  which  spring  from 
the  American  differentiation  of  the  race.  We  have 
more  room,  and  more  equality.  Our  manners  are 
affected  by  our  greater  amenity.  But  we  do  not 
need  the  abundant  testimony  of  the  daily  journals  to 
assure  us  how  thoroughly  personal  is,  in  general, 
our  point  of  view,  how  instinctive  is  our  protest 
against  the  impersonal  and  artistic  way  of  discussing 
and  deciding  any  serious  problem,  how  distmstful 
we  are  of  the  earnestness  of  whatever  bears  no  per- 
sonal indorsement.  "  It  makes  a  great  difference  to 
a  sentence,"  says  Emerson  somewhere,  "whether  or 
no  there  be  a  man  behind  it."  That  is  our  univer- 
sal feeling.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  the  serene 
and  charitable  Emerson  finding  the  flaying  of 
Marsyas  work  so  congenial  as  to  be  worthy  his  best 
and  most  vivacious  effort,  but  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  the  operation  would  awaken  his  interest  and,  if 
neatly  performed,  win  his  approval.  To  the  most 
malicious  Frenchman  on  the  other  hand,  the  flaying 
of  Marsyas  by  Apollo  would  seem  a  work  of  super- 
erogation. Neither  in  literature  nor  in  life  does  he 
practise  it.  "  That  is  a  fine  legend,  a  most  signifi- 
cant myth,"  he  would  remark  to  us,  "but  you  ma- 
tei-ialize  it  atrociously.  The  only  part  of  it  with 
which  we  are  directly  and  actively  concerned  is  the 
contest — that  part  which  Raphael  painted  with  a 
real  personal  feeling,  as  you  may  see  in  the  Louvre. 
The  consequences  to  incompetence  of  its  insolence 
are,  as  he  has  conventionalized  them  in  the  Vatican, 


200  FRENCH   TRAITS 

natural  and  necessary  ;  they  follow  without  the  in- 
terposition of  the  god,  who  was  bom  for  higher 
things.  Agag  is  sure  to  be  satisfactorily  hewn  in 
pieces,  and  the  work  is  accomplished  by  the  matter- 
of-course  operation  of  impersonal  forces.  Individ- 
ually and  socially  we  are  only  concerned  with  recog- 
nizing Agag  when  we  see  him  and  with  showing  our- 
selves superior  to  him.  He  is  so  little  liked  among 
us,  his  following  is  so  entirely  inconsiderable  com- 
pared with  that  he  can  boast  among  you  that  his 
fate,  indeed,  is  sealed  from  the  beginning.  To  de- 
nounce him  would  be  to  utter  platitudes." 


VI 

WOMEN 


WOMEN 

Writing  over  a  hundred  years  ago,  Sebastien  Mer- 
cier,  whose  "Tableau  de  Paris"  was  once  a  very 
popular  work,  says  of  his  countrywomen  :  "  French- 
women are  remarkable  for  piercing,  mischievous 
eyes,  elegant  figures,  and  sprightly  countenances, 
but  fine  heads  are  very  rare  amongst  them."  The 
type  has  not  varied  greatly  since  then  and  it  may 
be  safely  asserted  that  at  present  large  eyes  and 
beautiful  faces  are  as  rare  among  Frenchwomen  as 
are  poor  figures.  They  are  admired,  too,  in  France 
with  an  intensity  not  untinctured  with  envy.  For 
large  eyes  especially  this  admiration  is  universally 
unmeasured — no  woman's  eyes  seem  too  large  to  be 
beautiful ;  from  the  lay-figures  of  fashion  plates  to 
the  goddesses  of  the  Salon,  Grovin's  beauties,  the 
wax-figures  of  shop-windows — every  ideal  type 
whether  vulgar  or  refined  is  sure  to  possess  large 
eyes.  American  girls  have  not  this  peculiarity,  it  is 
well  known,  as  frequently  as  those  of  several  other 
races,  but  in  Paris  they  are  nearly  as  noted  for  it  as 
for  any  other  feature  of  their  pretty  faces.  An 
American  returning  home  after  a  long  sojourn  in 
France  is  himself  struck  by  the  number  of  "  ox-eyed 


204  FRENCH   TRAITS 

Junos  "  in  which  his  country  may  glory  and  which 
he  had  not  before  suspected.  Pretty  faces  are  not, 
perhaps,  more  abundant  in  France  than  large  eyes. 
They  are  rarer  among  women  of  a  certain  age  than 
among  young  girls — so  much  rarer  indeed  than  is 
the  case  with  us  that  one  naturally  infers  the  de- 
teriorating effect  of  French  Ufe  and  manners  upon 
the  fresher  and  more  delicate  beauties  of  feature 
and  color.  Of  this  Frenchwomen  seem  themselves 
convinced,  and  they  begin  early  the  endeavor  to 
circumvent  the  ungallant  influences  of  passing  years. 
It  is  a  bold  thing  to  say,  they  are  themselves  such 
excellent  judges  in  these  matters,  but  it  is  probable 
that  in  this  they  commit  a  grave  error,  and,  by 
meeting  them  half-way,  really  aid  in  the  ungra- 
cious work  of  these  influences.  Balzac  cynically 
divides  Parisians  into  the  two  classes  of  the  young 
and  the  old  who  attempt  to  appear  young.  As  to 
women  alone  he  does  not  seem,  to  a  foreign  ob- 
server, very  far  out  of  the  way.  There  are  doubt- 
less large  numbers  of  men  who  do  not  attempt  to 
regain  the  youthful  aspect  they  could  not  retain, 
but  almost  no  women. 

It  is  not  by  any  means  exclusively  vanity  that  fur- 
nishes the  motive  for  this  unequal  struggle  with 
nature.  Partly,  to  be  sure,  it  is  a  poignant  repug- 
nance to  loss  of  consideration  which,  in  a  society 
where  the  great  prize  of  life  is  the  esteem  of  others, 
is  of  great  importance.  But  in  the  main  it  proceeds 
from  a  passionate  desire  to  i)reserve  even  the  sem- 


WOMEN  205 

blance  of  the  period  when  one  feels  at  one's  best, 
when  one  can  enjoy  most  thoroughly,  and  when  one 
wastes  one's  life  the  least.  Some  day  perhaps  gray 
hair  will  become  as  fashionable  in  Paris  as  it  is  in 
New  York,  but  hitherto  there  are  no  signs  of  its  fa- 
vor. The  number  of  women  one  sees  who  have 
dyed  hair  is  very  large,  and,  till  one  remarks  a  cor- 
responding rarity  of  gray  hair,  very  odd.  At  first 
one's  respect  for  Parisian  taste  receives  a  severe 
shock.  The  dye  used,  however — apparently  the 
same  all  over  Paris — is  far  superior  to  the  hideous 
russets  we  are  accustomed  to  note  in  the  beard  and 
hair  of  an  occasional  under-bred  old  man,  and  when 
fresh  is,  except  for  its  evident  artificiality,  a  not  at 
all  bad  looking  dark-chestnut.  After  a  few  days  it 
becomes  easily  less  beautiful,  and  it  is  certainly  not 
renewed  often  enough.  The  ennui  of  the  process 
and  economy,  the  sense  for  both  of  which  is  quite 
as  keen  as  that  of  coquetry  in  France,  are  against 
its  frequent  renewal.  Before  long  one  becomes 
used  to  the  general  phenomenon  and  is  in  two 
minds  about  agreeing  with  the  Parisians  as  to  its 
preferability  to  gray  hair,  which  certainly  does  not 
suit  all  complexions  and  makes  the  person  not  natu- 
rally distinguished  appear  insignificant ;  and  except 
in  rare  cases  it  ages  rather  than  renders  piquant  the 
youthfulness  it  sometimes  accompanies.  As  for  the 
maitvaise  honte  of  resorting  to  artificial  aids  to 
beauty,  one  inclines  to  get  over  that  in  breathing 
the  Parisian  atmosphere  where  such  a  feeling  is 


206  FRENCH   TRAITS 

wholly  unknown  and  would  probably  be  incompre- 
hensible. Women  with  U3  certainly  resort  to  wigs 
in  case  of  baldness  and  to  rice  powder  in  the  event 
of  any  grave  defect  in  complexion.  The  line  be- 
tween the  palliation  of  natural  blemishes  and  the 
adornment  of  natural  features  is  difficult  to  draw. 
A  society  which  has  a  great  deal  of  regard  for  form 
will  insist  on  the  latter,  while  a  society  perpetually 
on  its  guard  against  permitting  form  to  out-weigh 
substance  will  hardly  excuse  the  former. 

The  truth  is  that  coquetry,  which  is  a  defect  in 
our  eyes,  is  a  quality  of  the  Frenchwoman.  It  is  a 
virtue  which  consecrates  as  it  were  the  possession  of 
natural  attractions.  In  France  always  le  charme 
fyrime  la  beaute,  and  coquetry  there  is  the  science  of 
charm  in  women.  Chann  in  this  special  sense  our 
women  do  not  greatly  study  ;  and  its  crude  exhibi- 
tions oftener  than  not  occur  in  conjunction  with  an 
absence  of  those  natural  attractions  so  much  better 
and  so  universally  appreciated  by  the  opposite  sex 
that  there  is  no  atoning  for  the  lack  of  them  nor  any 
need  of  enhancing  them.  But  in  France  to  paint 
the  lily  is  not  regarded  as  a  paradox.  The  result  is 
not  without  a  certain  specious  felicity,  it  must  be 
confessed  ;  as  indeed  many  American  men  who  have 
been  honored  in  any  degi-ee  with  French  feminuie 
society  could  probably  testify.  On  the  other  hand 
it  is  not  to  be  inferred  that  from  our  point  of  view 
the  French  lily  needs  to  be  painted.  Her  natural 
charms  are  many  and  great,  and  they  would  be  po- 


WOMEN  2^07 

tent  even  in  a  milieu  which  would  distinctly  frown 
upon  her  mobilization  and  manoeuvring  of  them,  so  to 
speak.  Her  complexion  is,  in  general — before  it  has 
submitted  to  the  inexorable  necessities  arising  from 
competition  Avith  the  heightened  and  accentuated 
tints  that  best  sustain  the  gaslight  (or  rather  can- 
dle-light) splendor  of  opera,  balls,  and  soirees — very 
nearly  perfection.  Less  florid  than  the  red  and 
white  freshness  so  greatly  admired  as  witnessing 
quite  as  much  as  decorating  the  superb  health  of 
English  women,  it  is  nevertheless  full  of  color,  read- 
ily changeable,  and  of  a  purity  unaffected  either  by 
its  occasional  leaning  toward  olive  or  by  its  more 
frequent  shading  into  pink.  Muddy  or  sallow  it 
never  is.  The  Parisienne  is  perhaps  often  etiolee — 
there  is  much  croaking  in  the  journals  about  the  ef- 
fect of  the  vie  fieoreuseet  excitante  of  Paris  ;  but  ane- 
mia as  a  chronic  condition  is  infrequent.  She  has 
a  disgust  for  invalidism  rare  among  American  wo- 
men, who  would  find  her  on  this  score  terribly  un- 
sympathetic— "cold  and  hard  "in  fact.  Unlike  so 
many  American  women,  who  esteem  her  blasee  in 
consequence,  elle  n'ed  pas  nte  d'hier,  in  French 
phrase,  and  she  perfectly  appreciates  the  intimate 
connection  between  invalidism  and  hysteria.  To  be 
pitied  forms  no  part  of  her  progi-amme,  and  to  be 
pitied  on  such  grounds  would  be  unendurable  to 
her.  The  "  rest  cure "  is  probably  unknown  in 
France. 

But  quite   as  much  as  such  commiseration   she 


208  FRENCH  TRAIT3 

undoubtedly  dreads  the  loss  of  physical  attractive- 
ness which  invalidism  involves.  She  devotes  indeed 
a  share  of  attention  to  the  conservation  of  her 
beauty  in  every  respect  which  the  American  woman 
would  esteem  excessive.  Her  hand,  oftener  expres- 
sive perhaps  than  mignonne,  but  in  general  shapely 
and  well-attached,  shows  the  advantages  of  this  at- 
tention. Her  foot  on  the  other  hand  shows  its  dis- 
advantages ;  it  is  as  a  rule  if  larger  than  the  cor- 
responding American  foot  (which  is  not  to  be  denied) 
smaller  by  a  greater  discrepancy  still  than  that  of 
the  Englishwoman,  and  there  seems  really  no  excuse 
for  compressing  it,  as  is  so  universally  done,  into 
the  fashionable  but  transparent  deception  known  as 
the  Louis  Quinze  boot  Under  this  treatment,  little 
diflferent  in  kind  from  that  which  is  de  rigueur  in 
China,  it  assumes  an  aspect  totally  devoid  of  grace- 
ful contour,  to  be  characterized  only  by  what  Car- 
lyle  would  describe  as  "mere  hoofiness."  Still  for 
a  moment — the  moment  during  which  alone  perhaps 
the  feminine  foot  should  be  remarked — the  effect  is 
possibly  to  diminish  apparent  size  ;  and  here  again, 
as  in  the  instances  of  paint  and  powder  and  dyes, 
one  should  hesitate  before  proflfering  advice  to  so 
excellent  a  judge  as  the  Frenchwoman.  The  point 
remains,  in  Candida's  words,  "une  grande  question." 
Coquetry  itself,  however,  can  offer  nothing  to  en- 
hance what  is  beyond  all  question  the  Frenchwo- 
man's most  admirable  physical  endowment,  namely 
her  incomparable  figure.     Embonpoint,  it  is  true,  is 


WOMEN  209 

a  danger  to  be  contemplated  as  one  approaches 
middle  age.  Beyond  this  period  of  life  France  un- 
doubtedly possesses  her  full  shai'e  of  ample  and  ma- 
tronly femininity.  The  opposite  tendency  may  safe- 
ly be  scouted ;  Madame  Bernhardt  herself  is  well- 
known  to  be  what  is  called  afausse  maigre.  But  in 
any  assemblage  of  Frenchwomen  from  a  ball  in  the 
Faubourg  St.  Germain  to  a  6a  Z  de  V  Opera  the  number 
of  admirable  figures  is  very  striking ;  the  face  may 
be  positively  common,  but  the  figure  is  nearly  sure 
to  be  superb.  The  wasp-waist  so  much  affected 
across  the  Channel  is  apparently  confined  to  fashion- 
plates  designed  for  exportation.  The  unwisdom  of 
tight-lacing  is  evidently  not  more  perfectly  appre- 
ciated than  its  unsightliness,  though  the  relations  of 
hygiene  to  beauty  are  thoroughly  understood  ;  it  is 
doubtless  often  resorted  to,  but  mainly  as  a  correc- 
tive. With  this  excellence  of  figure  generally  goes 
a  corresponding  excellence  of  carriage ;  in  this  re- 
spect the  skill  with  which  the  Louis  Quinze  -heel  is 
circumvented  is  beyond  praise.  And  with  regard 
to  the  tact  and  taste  displayed  in  the  garb  which 
decorates  this  figure  and  carriage,  the  world  is,  I  sup- 
pose, as  well  agreed  now  as  in  the  time  when  the  Em- 
press Eugenie  set  its  fashions  for  it  in  a  more  inexor- 
able way  than  the  women  of  the  present  republic  can 
pretend  to.  France  is  still,  if  not  the  only  country 
in  the  world  where  dress  is  an  art,  at  least  the  only 
one  where  the  dressmaker  and  the  milliner  are  art- 
ists. 

14 


210  FRENCH   TRAITS 

It  is  as  imquestionably  the  country  in  which  wo- 
men think  most  of  dress.  The  fact  is  often  enough 
made  a  reproach  to  the  Frenchwoman,  and  nothing 
is  commoner  than  to  hear  Englishmen,  Germans, 
Spaniards,  and  Italians,  as  well  as  Americans,  in 
Paris  refen-ing  to  it  as  indicating  her  character  and 
defining  the  limit  of  her  activities.  Her  toilet  oc- 
cupies the  Parisienne  too  exclusively,  is  nearly  the 
universal  foreign  opinion — even  among  those  for- 
eigners who  are  themselves  most  attracted  by  the 
graces  and  felicities  of  the  toilet  in  question  as  well 
as  least  serious  themselves.  The  difficulty  of  trans- 
muting such  a  trait  into  that  domesticity  which  the 
Southern  Latin  ready  to  se  ranger  prizes  as  highly 
as  the  Teuton  or  Anglo-Saxon  who  makes  it  a  part 
of  his  feminine  ideal,  is  a  frequent  theme  of  purely 
disinterested  speculation  among  these  social  philos- 
ophera  It  is  a  difficulty  nevertheless  which  does 
not  puzzle  the  Frenchman.  The  conditions  of 
French  life  are  such  that  domesticity  is  either  not 
understood  irr  precisely  the  sense  in  which  it  is 
accepted:  elsewhere,  or  is  not  given  the  same  over- 
mastering importance  as  an  absolute  quality.  Tbe 
domesticity  aimed  at  by  the  Spanish  convent  and  cul- 
tivated by  the  Germanic  hearth  and  chimney-corner 
is  in  no  sense  the  object  of  the  Frenchman's  ambi- 
tion for  the  Frenchwoman.  Here  as  elsewhere  his 
social  instinct  triumphs  over  every  other,  and  he  re- 
gards tbe  family  circle  as  altogether  too  narrow  a 
sphere  for  the  activities  of  a  being  who  occupies  so 


WOMEN  211 

much  of  liis  mind  and  heart,  and  in  whose  consider- 
ation he  is  as  much  concerned  as  she  in  his.  To  be 
the  mother  of  his  children  and  the  nurse  of  his  de- 
cHning  years  is  a  destiny  which,  unreHeved  by  the 
gratification  of  her  own  instincts  of  expansion,  ho 
would  as  little  wish  for  her  as  she  would  for  herself. 
To  be  the  ornament  of  a  society,  to  awake  perpetual 
interest,  to  be  perpetually  and  universally  charming, 
to  contribute  powerfully  to  the  general  aims  of  her 
environment,  never  to  lose  her  character  as  woman 
in  any  of  the  phases  or  functions  of  womanly  exist- 
ence, even  in  wifehood  or  maternity — this  central 
motive  of  the  Frenchwoman's  existence  is  cordially 
approved  by  the  Frenchman.  In  fact  it  is  because 
he  approves  and  insists  upon  it  that  she  is  what  she 
is.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  she  devotes  so  much 
attention  to  dress,  which  in  her  thus,  spite  of  those 
surface  indications  that  mislead  the  foreigner,  is  al- 
most never  due  to  the  passion  for  dress  in  itself  to 
which  similar  preoccupation  infallibly  testifies  in  the 
women  of  other  societies.  A  New  York  belle  dresses 
for  her  rivals — when  she  does  not,  like  the  abori- 
gines of  her  species,  dress  for  herself  alone.  Mr. 
Henry  James  acutely  represents  the  Mrs.  Westgate 
of  his  "International  Episode"  as  "sighing  to 
think  the  Duchess  would  never  know  how  well  she 
was  dressed."  To  induce  analogous  regret  in  a 
Frenchwoman  a  corresponding  masculine  obtuse- 
ness  would  be  absolutely  indispensable.  And  this 
among  her  own  countrymen  she  would  never  en- 


212  FRENCH   TRAITS 

counter.  Her  dress,  then,  is  a  part  of  her  coquetrj 
— one  of  the  most  important  weapons  in  a  tolerably 
well-stocked  arsenal ;  but  it  is  nothing  more,  and  it 
in  no  degree  betokens  frivolity.  Like  her  figure 
and  her  carriage  it  is  a  continual  ocular  demonstra- 
tion and  a  strong  ally  of  her  instinct,  her  genius,  for 
style.  In  these  three  regards  she  is  unapproachable, 
and  in  every  other  attribute  of  style  she  is  certainly 
unsurpassed.  In  elegance,  in  intelligence,  in  self- 
possession,  in  poise,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  ex- 
ceptions in  other  countries  to  rival  the  average 
Parisienne.  And  her  coquetry,  which  endues  her 
style  with  the  element  of  charm  (of  which  it  is,  as  I 
said,  the  science),  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  the 
instinct  to  please  highly  developed.  It  is  not,  as 
certainly  coquetry  elsewhere  may  sometimes  be 
called,  the  instinct  to  please  deeply  perverted.  The 
French  coquette  does  not  flirt.  Her  frivolity,  her 
superficiality,  may  be  great  in  many  directions — in 
religion,  in  moral  steadfastness,  in  renunciation,  in 
constancy,  even  in  sensibility — but  in  coquetry  she 
is  never  superficial ;  the  dimly  veiled,  half-acknowl- 
edged insincerity  of  what  is  known  as  flirtation 
would  seem  to  her  frivolous  to  a  degree  unsuspect- 
ed by  her  American  contemporary.  To  her  as  to 
her  countrymen  the  relations  of  men  and  women  are 
too  important  and  too  interesting  not  to  be  at  bot- 
tom entirely  serious. 

In  fine  to  estimate  the  Frenchwoman's  moral  na- 
ture with  any  approach  to  adequacy  it  is  necessary 


WOMEN  213 

entirely  to  avoid  viewing  her  from  an  Anglo-Saxon 
standpoint.  Apart  from  her  milieu  she  is  not  to  be 
understood  at  all.  The  ideals  of  woman  in  general 
held  by  this  milieu  are  wholly  different  from  our 
ideals.  To  see  how  and  wherein,  let  us  inquire  of 
some  frank  French  friend.  "  We  shall  never  agree 
about  women,"  he  will  be  sure  to  admit  at  the  out- 
set ;  and  he  may  be  imagined  to  continue  very  much 
in  this  strain  :  "  We  Frenchmen  have  a  repugnance, 
both  instinctive  and  explicit,  to  your  propensity  to 
make  companionability  the  essential  quality  of  the 
ideal  woman.  Consciously  or  unconsciously  this  is 
precisely  what  you  do.  It  is  in  virtue  of  their  being 
more  companionable,  and  in  an  essentially  masculine 
sense,  that  the  best  of  your  women,  the  serious  ones, 
shine  superior  in  your  eyes  to  their  frivolous  or  pe- 
dantic rivals.  You  seem  to  us,  in  fact,  to  approach 
far  more  nearly  than  your  English  cousins  to  the 
ideal  in  this  respect  of  your  common  Gothic  ances- 
tors. Your  ideal  is  pretty  closely  the  Alruna  wo- 
man— an  august  creature  spiritually  endowed  with 
inflexible  purity  and  lofty,  respect-compelling  vir- 
tues, performing  the  office  of  a  '  guiding-star '  amid 
the  perplexities  of  life,  whose  approval  or  censure 
is  important  in  a  thousand  moral  exigencies,  and 
one's  feeling  for  whom  is  always  strongly  tinctured 
— even  in  the  days  of  courtship — with  something 
akin  to  filial  feeling.  In  your  daily  life  this  ideal 
becomes,  of  course,  familiarized— you  do  not  need 
to  be  reminded  that '  familiarized  '  is,  indeed,  an  ex- 


214  FRENCH  TRAITS 

tenuating  term  to  describe  the  eflfect  upon  many  of 
your  ideals  when  they  are  brought  into  the  atmos- 
phere of  your  daily  life,  that  the  contrast  between 
American  ideals  and  American  practice  frequently 
strikes  us  as  grotesque.  In  the  atmosphere  of  your 
daily  life  the  Alruna  woman  becomes  a  good  fellow. 
She  despises  girls  who  flirt,  as  you  yourselves  de- 
spise our  dandies  and  our  petits  jeunes  gens.  She 
despises  with  equal  vigor  the  lackadaisical,  the  hys- 
terical, the  affected  in  any  way.  She  plays  a  good 
game  of  tennis  ;  it  is  one  of  her  ambitions  to  cast  a 
fly  adroitly,  to  handle  an  oar  well.  She  is  by  no 
means  a  Di  Vernon.  She  has  a  thoroughly  mascu- 
line antipathy  to  the  romantic,  and  is  embarrassed 
in  its  presence.  She  reads  the  journals  ;  she  has 
opinions,  which,  unlike  her  inferior  sisters,  she 
rarely  obtrudes.  She  is  tremendously  efficient  and 
never  poses.  She  is  saved  from  masculinity  by 
great  tact,  great  delicacy  in  essentials,  by  her  beauty 
which  is  markedly  feminine,  by  her  immensely  nar- 
rower sphere,  and  by  Divine  Providence.  She  is 
thus  thoroughly  companionable,  and  she  is  after  all 
a  woman.  This  makes  her  immensely  attractive  to 
you.  But  nothing  could  be  less  seductive  to  us  than 
this  predominance  of  companionableness  over  the 
feminine  element,  the  element  of  sex.  Of  our 
women,  ideal  and  real  (which  you  know  in  France, 
the  country  of  equality,  of  homogeneity,  of  averages, 
is  nearly  the  same  thing)  we  could  better  say  that 
they   are  thoroughly  feminine  and  that  they  are, 


WOMEN  215 

after  all,  companionable.  Indeed,  if  what  I  under, 
stand  by  'companionable'  be  correct,  i.  e.,  rien  que 
s'entendre,  they  are  quite  as  much  so  as  their  Amer- 
ican sisters,  though  in  a  yery  different  way,  it  ia 
true. 

"  Let  me  explain.  The  strictness  of  your  social 
code  effectually  shuts  off  the  American  woman  from 
interest  in,  and  the  American  girl  from  knowledge 
of,  what  is  really  the  essential  part  of  nearly  half  of 
life  ;  I  mean  from  any  mental  occupation  except  in 
their  more  superficial  aspects  with  the  innumerable 
phenomena  attending  one  of  the  two  great  instincts 
from  which  modem  science  has  taught  us  to  derive 
all  the  moi-al  perceptions  and  habits  of  human  life. 
This  is  explainable  no  doubt  by  the  unwritten  but 
puissant  law  which  informs  every  article  of  your  so- 
cial constitution  that  relates  to  women  :  namely,  the 
law  that  insures  the  precedence  of  the  young  girl 
over  the  married  woman.  With  you,  indeed,  the 
young  girl  has  le  haul  du  pave  in  what  seems  to  us 
a  very  degree.     Your  literature,  for  exam- 

ple, is  her  in  a  bondage  which  to  us  seems 

abject  kes  us  esteem  it  superficial.     '  Since 

the  a  1  (Jt  •  "Tom  Jones"  no  one  has  been  per- 
mitte  'o  'i  {  ct  a  man  as  he  really  is,'  complains 
Tbac!"  Yith  you  it  is  even  worse  because  the 

youn  ercises  an  even  greater  tyranny  than 

in  E:  /Nothing  so  forcibly  illustrates  her  po- 

sitio  ^' head  of  your  society,  however — not 

ever  ^rwhelming  predominance  in  all  your 


216  FRENCH  TRAITS 

social  reunions  within  and  without  doors,  wintef 
and  summer,  at  luncheons,  dinners,  lawn-parties, 
balls,  receptions,  lectures,  and  church — as  the  cir- 
cumstance that  you  endeavor  successfully  to  keep 
her  a  girl  after  she  has  become  a  woman.  You  de- 
sire and  contrive  that  your  wives  shall  be  virgins  in 
word,  thought,  and  aspiration.  That  this  should 
be  the  case  before  marriage  everyone  comprehends. 
That  is  the  end  of  our  endeavor  equally  with  yoiu-s. 
In  every  civilized  society  men  wish  to  be  themselves 
the  introducers  and  instructors  of  their  wives  in  a 
realm  of  such  real  and  vital  interest  as  that  of  which 
marriage,  everywhere  but  in  your  country,  opens 
the  door.  But  with  us  the  young  girl  is  constantly 
looking  forward  to  becoming,  and  envying  the  con- 
dition of,  a  woman.  That  is  the  source  of  our  re- 
strictions, of  our  conventual  regulations,  which  seem 
to  you  so  absurd,  even  so  dishonoring.  You  are 
saved  from  having  such,  however,  by  the  fact  that 
with  you  the  young  girl  is  the  rounded  and  com- 
plete ideal,  the  type  of  womanhood,  and  that  it  is 
her  condition,  spiritually  speaking,  that  the  wife 
and  even  the  mother  emulate.  And  you  desire 
ardently  that  they  should.  You  do  not  'see  any 
necessity,'  as  you  say  in  your  utilitarian  phraseol- 
ogy, of  a  woman's  'losing'  anything  of  the  fresh 
and  clear  charm  which  perfumes  the  existence  of 
the  young  girL  You  have  a  short  way  of  disposing 
of  our  notion  that  a  woman  is  the  flower  and  fulfil- 
ment of  that  of  which  the  young  girl  is  the  bud  and 


WOMEN  217 

the  promise.  You  esteem  this  notion  a  piece  of 
sophistry  designed  to  conceal  our  really  immoral 
desire  to  rob  our  women  of  the  innocence  and  na- 
wete  which  we  insist  upon  in  the  young  girl,  in  order 
that  our  social  life  may  be  more  highly  spiced. 
Your  view  is  wholly  different  from  that  of  your  race 
at  the  epoch  of  its  most  considerable  achievements 
in  the  'criticism  of  life'  and  antecedent  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon  invention  of  prudery  as  a  bulwark  of 
virtue.  It  is  a  view  which  seems  to  spring  directly 
from  the  Puritan  system  of  each  individual  man- 
aging independently  his  own  spiritual  affairs  with- 
out any  of  the  reciprocal  aids  and  the  division  of 
labor  provided  for  in  the  more  elaborate  scheme  of 
Catholicism,  in  consequence  of  which  each  individ- 
ual left  in  this  way  wholly  to  himself  is  forced  into 
a  timid  and  distrustful  attitude  toward  temptation. 
Nothing  is  more  noticeable  in  your  women,  thus, 
than  a  certain  suspicious  and  timorous  exclusion 
from  the  field  of  contemplation  of  anything  unsuited 
to  the  attention  of  the  young  girl.  It  is  as  if  they 
feared  contamination  for  virtue  if  the  attitude  and 
habit  of  mind  belonging  to  innocence  were  once 
abandoned.  They  probably  do  fear  vaguely  that 
you  fear  it  for  them,  that  your  feminine  ideal  ex- 
cludes it. 

"  Now  it  is  very  evident  that  however  admirable 
in  its  results  this  position  may  be,  and  however 
sound  in  itself,  it  involves  an  important  limitation 
of  that  very  companionableness  which  you  so  much 


218  FRENCH  TRAITS 

insist  on  in  your  women.  In  this  sense,  the  average 
Frenchwoman  is  an  equal,  a  companion,  to  a  degree 
almost  never  witnessed  with  you.  After  an  hour  of 
feminine  society  we  do  not  repair  to  the  club  for  a 
relaxation  of  mind  and  spirit,  for  a  respiration  of 
expansion,  and  to  find  in  unrestrained  freedom  an 
enjoyment  that  has  the  additional  sense  of  being  a 
relief.  Our  clubs  are  in  fact  mere  excuses  for 
gambling,  not  refuges  for  bored  husbands  and  home- 
less bachelors.  Conversation  among  men  is  per- 
haps grosser  in  quality,  the  equivoque  is  perhaps 
not  so  delicate,  so  spirituelle,  but  they  do  not  diflfer 
in  kind  from  the  conversational  tissue  in  mixed 
company,  as  with  you  they  do  so  widely.  With 
you  this  difference  in  kind  is  notoriously  an  abyss. 
In  virtue  of  our  invention  of  treating  delicate  topics 
with  innuendo,  our  mixed  society  gains  immensely 
in  interest  and  attractiveness,  and  our  women  are 
more  intimately  companionable  than  yo\irs.  You 
Americans  take  easily  to  innuendo  from  your  habit 
of  mind,  which  is  sensitive  and  subtile.  You  are 
unaccountably  unlike  the  English  in  this  respect. 
As  a  rule,  one  of  you  who  should  know  French  and 
understand  French  character  as  well  as  Thackeray, 
would  not  like  him  be  depressed  by  what  he  was 
pleased  to  call  'all  that  dreary  double  entendre.' 
StUl,  when  you  attempt  the  application  of  it  to  deli- 
cate topics,  I  can  myself  recall  instances  of  your 
leaving,  as  we  say,  something  to  be  desired.  In 
such  an  instance  it  is  natural  that  a  feeling  of  ill- 


WOMEN  219 

success  should  produce  a  conviction  that  the  topic 
is  too  delicate  to  be  handled  at  all ;  seeing  another 
person  handle  it  with  triumphant  gingerliness  does 
not  unsettle  such  a  conviction — the  '  double-entendre' 
becomes  irretrievably  'dreary.'  But,  in  point  of 
fact,  it  is  only  a  contrivance  of  ours  to  extend  the 
range  of  conversation  in  mixed  company ;  you  can 
do  without  it  because  you  limit  any  conversation 
with  a  wide  range  to  one  sex,  to  your  clubs  and 
business  offices — where,  apparently,  it  is  not  needed. 
It  seems  to  many  of  you,  doubtless,  a  device  for  con- 
fining the  talk  in  mixed  company  to  what  are  called 
delicate  topics.  But  that  side  of  our  talk  really  ap- 
pears magnified  to  you  because  of  its  absolute 
novelty.  In  strictness  there  is  in  mixed  company 
quite  as  much  conversation  upon  politics,  letters, 
art,  and  affairs  in  Paris  as  even  in  Boston.  Our 
equivoque  simply  takes  the  place  of  your  silences. 
The  point  is  that  from  the  circumstance  that  we  do 
not  exclude  it,  the  conversational  tissue  in  mixed 
company  is  with  us  immensely  varied,  and  that 
when  a  Frenchman  finds  himself  in  the  presence  of 
a  woman — in  '  ladies'  society '  as  you  express  it — 
whether  d  deux  or  in  a  general  gathering,  he  experi- 
ences no  more  restraint — except  that  which  polishes 
his  periods  and  refines  his  expression — than  an 
American  does  at  his  club  or  office.  His  '  instinct 
for  expansion '  suffers  no  repression.  Society  be- 
comes a  very  different  thing  from  'ladies'  society.' 
It  is  not  a  medium  for  the  exploitation  of  the  young 


220  FRENCH   TRAITS 

girl  and  the  woman  who  emulates  and  follows 
her  haud  passibus  cequis  ;  nor  is  it  a  realm  '  pre- 
sided over '  by  '  the  fair  sex ' ;  it  is  an  association 
of  men  and  women  for  the  interchange  of  ideas 
on  all  topics,  and  the  texture  out  of  which  the 
drama  of  hfe  is  woven.  In  saying  that  your  ideal 
of  companionableness  in  woman  was  defective 
this  was  what  I  had  in  mind.  Even  in  compan- 
ionableness we  find  o\ir  women  much  more  to  our 
mind. 

"  But  this  is,  after  all,  a  detail.  Even  if  your 
women  were  intimately  companionable  they  would 
noue  the  less  radically  differ  from  our  own;  we 
should  still  reproach  them  with  a  certain  masculine 
quality  in  the  elevated,  and  a  certain  prosaic  note  in 
the  familiar,  types.  By  masculine,  I  certainly  do 
not  here  intend  the  signification  you  give  to  your 
derisive  epithet  '  strong-minded.'  In  affirming 
that  there  is  a  generous  ampleness  in  the  feminine 
quality  of  our  women  unobservable  in  yours,  I  do 
not  mean  to  charge  them  with  inferiority  in  what 
you  call  '  pure  mentality  ; '  in  intelligence  and  capa- 
cities we  believe  them  unequalled  the  world  over. 
But  they  are  essentially  less  masculine  in  avoiding 
strictly  all  competition  with  men,  in  conserving  all 
their  individuality  of  sex  and  following  their  own 
bent.  Nothing  is  more  common  than  to  hear  Amer- 
ican women  lament  their  lack  of  opportunity,  envy 
the  opportunity  of  men.  Nothing  is  rarer  with  us. 
It  never  occurs  to  a  Frenchwoman  to  regret  her 


WOMEN  221 

sex.  It  is  probable  that  almost  every  American 
woman  with  any  pretensions  to  'pure  mentality,* 
feels,  on  the  contrary,  that  her  sex  is  a  limitation 
and  wishes,  with  that  varying  ardor  and  intermittent 
energy  which  characterize  her,  that  she  were  a  man 
and  had  a  man's  opportunity.  In  a  thousand  ways 
she  is  the  man's  rival,  which  with  us  she  never  is. 
Hence  the  popularity  with  you  of  the  agitation  for 
woman-suffrage,  practically  unknown  in  France. 
Your  society  probably  wholly  undervalues  this 
movement,  and  frowns  upon  it  with  a  forcible  feeble- 
ness that  is  often  ludicrously  unjust.  You  do  not 
perceive  that  it  furnishes  almost  the  only  outlet  for 
the  ambition  and  the  energy  of  such  of  your  women 
as  are  persistently  and  not  spasmodically  energetic 
and  ambitious,  and  that  its  worst  foe  with  you  is  the 
great  mass  of  women  themselves,  which  is  governed 
by  timorousness,  by  intellectual  indolence,  and  by 
the  habit  born  of  long-continued  subordination  in 
all  serious  matters.  To  a  disinterested  observer 
of  the  complacence  with  which  your  society  con- 
templates '  Folly  set  in  place  exalted,'  in  this  mat- 
ter, it  is  impossible  not  to  remark  the  secret  sym- 
pathy with  the  movement  entertained  by  serious 
women  and  concealed  in  deference  to  the  opinion  of 
the  mass,  whose  fiat  in  all  matters  related  to  *  good 
taste '  is  necessarily  final.  They  probably  fear  that 
the  mass  of  their  countrywomen,  spite  of  the  indefi- 
nite multiplication  of  female  colleges,  will  never  be- 
come really  and  responsibly  intelligent  without  the 


222  FRENCH  TRAITS 

8uffi*age  ;  and  in  effect  with  you  this  must  become 
the  great  practical  argument  for  it.  Animated  as 
the  most  serious  of  American  women  unquestionably 
are  by  a  sense  of  rivaliy  with  men,  they  instinctively 
feel  this  handicap,  and  instinctively  desire  for  their 
sex  the  dignity  and  seriousness  conferred  by  power 
and  the  sense  of  responsibility  power  involves.  But 
I  wish  I  could  make  plain  to  you  how  differently 
the  Frenchwoman  feels,  how  radically  different  the 
Frenchwoman  is.  Being  in  no  sense,  and  never 
feeling  herself  to  be,  the  rival  of  man  and  the  emu- 
lator of  his  opportunities,  to  her  seriousness  and 
dignity  the  suffrage  could  add  nothing  whatever. 
Her  power  and  responsibility  lie  in  quite  another 
direction,  and  that  they  do  is  quite  clear  to  her.  It 
has  in  fact  been  so  clear  to  her  in  the  past,  that  we 
have  hitherto  made  the  mistake  of  giving  her  in 
general  an  extremely  superficial  education.  Madame 
Dubarry  got  along  very  well  without  any  at  alL 
This  is  an  error  we  are  just  now  systematically  re- 
pairing. And  we  have  our  croakers  who  oppose  the 
reform,  entitle  their  gloomy  vaticinations  '  Plus  de 
femmes,'  and  predict  that  our  women  will  become 
Americanized.  They  are  needlessly  alarmed  ;  for 
this  Americanization  involves  the  quality  of  mascu- 
linity which  does  not  exist  at  all,  either  in  the  nat- 
ure or  in  the  ideal  of  our  women.  It  is  neither 
their  disposition  nor  their  aspiration  to  enter  that 
condition  of  friendly  rivalry  with  men,  to  become 
members  of  that  '  mutual  protective  association/ 


WOMEN  223 

which  plays  so  large  a  part  in  the  existence  and  im- 
agination of  your  more  serious  women. 

"  The  difference  is  nowhere  so  luminously  illus- 
trated as  in  the  respective  attitudes  of  French  and 
American  women  toward  the  institution  of  marriage. 
With  us  from  the  hour  when  she  begins  first  to  think 
at  all  of  her  future — an  epoch  which  arrives  prob- 
ably much  earlier  than  with  you — marriage  is  the 
end  and  aim  of  a  woman's  existence.  And  it  is  so, 
consciously  and  deliberately.  A  large  part  of  her 
conduct  is  influenced  by  this  particular  prospect. 
It  is  the  conscious  and  deliberate  aim  also  of  her 
parents  or  guardians  for  her.  They  constantly  re- 
mind her  of  it.  Failure  to  attain  it  is  considered  by 
her  and  by  them  as  the  one  great  failure,  to  avoid 
which  every  effort  should  tend,  every  aspiration  be 
directed.  In  its  excess  this  becomes  either  ludi- 
crous or  repulsive  as  one  looks  at  it.  '  Si  tu  veux 
te  marier,  ne  fais  jamais  9a  ' — '  Cela  t'empechera  de 
te  marier ' — who  has  not  been  fatigued  with  such 
maternal  admonitions  which  resound  in  interiors  by 
no  means  always  of  the  basse  classe.  But  the  result 
is  that  marriage  occupies  a  share  of  the  young  girl's 
mind  and  meditation  which  to  your  young  girls 
would  undoubtedly  seem  disproportionate,  and  in- 
deed involve  a  sense  of  shame.  There  is  no  more 
provision  in  the  French  social  constitution  than  in 
the  order  of  nature  itself  for  the  old  maid.  Her 
fate  is  eternal  eccentricity,  and  is  correspondingly 
dreaded  among  us  who  dread  nothing  more  than  ex- 


224  FRENCH  TRAITS 

elusion  from  the  sympathies  of  society  and  a  share 
in  its  organized  activities.  IVIarriage  once  attained, 
the  young  girl,  though  become  by  it  a  woman,  is 
not  of  course  essentially  changed  but  only  more 
highly  organized  in  her  original  direction.  You 
may  be  surprised  to  hear  that  sometimes  it  suffices 
her — as  it  suffices  English,  and  used  to  American 
women  ;  though  it  must  be  admitted  that  our  society 
does  not  make  of  even  marriage  an  excuse  for  ex- 
acting the  sum  of  a  woman's  activities  which  it  is 
the  Anglo-Saxon  tendency  to  do,  and  that  thus  her 
merit  is  less  conspicuous.  If  marriage  do  not  suf- 
fice her,  it  is  not  in  '  Sorosis '  or  Dorcas  or  Browning 
societies,  or  art  or  books  that  she  seeks  distraction, 
but  in  the  consolation  strictly  cognate  to  that  of 
marriage  which  society  offers  her.  Accordingly, 
whatever  goes  to  make  up  the  distinctively  feminine 
side  of  woman's  nature  tends  with  us  to  become 
highly  developed.  It  acquires  a  refinement,  a  sub- 
tlety, of  organization  quite  unknown  to  societies 
whose  ideal  women  inspire  filial  feeling.  We  have 
as  a  nile  very  few  Cornelias.  Our  mothers  them- 
selves are  far  from  being  Spartan.  The  Gothic  god- 
dess is  practically  unknown  in  France.  *  Woman's 
sphere,'  as  you  call  it,  is  totally  distinct  from  man's. 
The  action  and  reaction  of  the  two  which  produce 
the  occupation,  the  amusement,  the  life  of  society 
are  far  more  intimate  than  with  you,  but  they  are 
the  exact  reverse  of  homogeneous. 

"It  is  an  inevitable  corollary  from  this  that  that 


WOMEN  225 

sentimental  side  which  you  seem  to  us  to  be  en- 
deavoring to  subordinate  in  your  more  serious 
women,  receives  in  the  Frenchwoman  that  greatest 
of  all  benefits,  a  harmonious  and  natural  develop- 
ment. Before  and  after  marriage,  and  however 
marriage  may  turn  for  her,  it  is  her  disposition  to 
love  and  her  capacity  for  loving  which  are  stimulated 
constantly  by  her  surroundings,  and  which  are  really 
the  measure  of  the  esteem  in  which  she  is  held.  To 
love  intensely  and  passionately  is  her  ideal.  It  is  so 
much  her  ideal  that  if  marriage  does  not  enable  her 
to  attain  it,  it  is  a  virtue  rather  than  a  demerit  in 
her  eyes  to  seek  it  elsewhere.  Not  to  die  before 
having  attained  in  its  fulness  this  end  of  the  law  of 
her  being  is  often  the  source  of  the  Frenchwoman's 
tragic  disasters.  But  even  when  indubitable  dis- 
aster arrives  to  her  it  is  at  least  tragic,  and  a  tragedy 
of  this  kind  is  in  itself  glorious.  To  remain  spirit- 
ually an  etre  incomplet  is  to  her  nearly  as  dreadful  a 
fate  as  to  become  a  monstrosity.  Both  are  equally 
hostile  to  nature,  and  we  have  a  national  passion  for 
being  in  harmony  with  nature.  It  is  probably  im- 
possible to  make  you  comprehend  how  far  this  is 
carried  by  us.  Take  the  life  of  George  Sand  as  an 
instance.  It  was  incontestably  the  inspiration  of 
her  works,  and  to  us  it  is  the  reverse  of  reprehensi- 
ble, '  for  she  loved  much  ; '  it  is  not  her  elopement 
with  Musset  but  her  desertion  of  him  that  indicates 
to  our  mind  her  weak  side.  In  this  way  the  atti- 
tude of  the  Frenchwoman  toward  love  is  one  of 
15 


226  FRENCH  TRAITS 

perfect  frankness.  So  far  from  dissembling  its  na- 
ture— either  transcendentally  or  pietistically,  after 
the  fashion  of  your  maidens,  or  mystically,  after 
the  fashion  in  the  pays  de  Gretchen — she  appreciates 
it  directly  and  simply  as  a  passion,  and  for  her  the 
most  potent  of  the  passions,  the  passion  whose  praise 
has  been  the  burden  of  all  the  poets  since  the  morn- 
ing stars  first  sang  together,  and  whose  possession 
shares  equally  with  the  possession  of  superior  in- 
telligence the  honor  of  distinguishing  man  from  the 
lower  animals.  This  is  why  to  our  women,  as  much 
as  to  our  men,  your  literature,  your  '  criticism  of 
life,'  seems  pale,  as  we  say — pale  and  superficial. 
This  is  why  we  had  such  an  engouement  for  your 
Byron  and  never  heard  of  your  Wordsworth.  This 
is  why  we  occupy  ourselves  so  much  with  cognate 
subjects  as  you  will  have  remarked. 

"And  the  sentimental  side,  being  thus  naturally 
and  harmoniously  developed,  becomes  thus  natur- 
ally and  spontaneously  the  instrument  of  woman's 
power  and  the  source  of  her  dignity.  Through  it 
she  seeks  her  triumphs  and  attains  her  ends.  To 
it  is  due  not  her  influence  over  men — as  with  your 
inveterate  habit  of  either  divorcing  the  sexes  into 
a  friendly  rivalry  or  associating  them  upon  the  old- 
fashioned,  English,  harem-like  basis,  you  would  in- 
evitably express  it — but  her  influence  upon  society. 
This  resiilts  in  a  great  gain  to  women  themselves — 
increases  indefinitely  their  dignity  and  power.  It 
is  axiomatic  that  anything  inevitable  and  not  in  it- 


WOMEN  227 

self  an  evil  it  is  far  better  to  utilize  than  to  resist. 
Everyone  acknowledges  the  eminence  of  the  senti- 
mental side  in  woman's  nature,  the  great  part  which 
it  plays  in  her  conduct,  the  great  influence  it  has 
upon  her  motives.  And  since  it  has,  therefore,  in- 
evitably to  be  reckoned  with,  its  development  ac- 
complishes for  women  results  which  could  not  be 
hoped  for  if  sentiment  were  merely  treated  as  an 
inevitable  handicap  to  be  modified  and  mitigated. 
Your  own  logic  seems  to  us  exceedingly  singular. 
You  argue  that  men  and  women  should  be  equal, 
that  the  present  regrettable  inequality  with  you  is 
due  to  the  greater  influence  of  sentiment  on  wo- 
men's minds  in  viewing  purely  intellectual  matters 
(you  are  constantly  throwing  this  up  to  your  wo- 
man suffragists),  and  that  therefore  the  way  in  which 
women  are  to  be  improved  and  elevated  (as  you  cu- 
riously express  it)  is  clearly  by  the  repression  of 
their  sentiment.  It  is  the  old  story  :  you  are  con- 
stantly teaching  your  women  to  envy  the  opportu- 
nities of  men,  to  regret  their  '  inferiority '  hitherto, 
and  to  endeavor  to  emulate  masculine  virtues  by 
mastering  their  emotions  and  suppressing  their 
sentiment ;  that  is  to  say,  you  are  constantly  doing 
this  by  indirection  and  unconsciously,  at  least,  and 
by  betraying  the  fact  that  such  is  your  ideal  for 
them.  You  never  seem  to  think  they  can  be  treated 
as  a  fundamentally  different  order  of  capacity  and 
disposition.  I  remember  listening  for  two  hours  to 
one  of  your  cleverest  women  lecturing  on  Joan  of 


228  FRENCH  TRAITS 

Ai'c,  and  the  thesis  of  her  lecture  was  that  there 
was  no  mystery  at  all  about  the  Maid  and  her  ac- 
complishments, except  the  eternal  mystery  of  tran- 
scendent military  genius,  that  she  was  in  fact  a  fe- 
male Napoleon  and  that  it  was  the  *  accident  of  sex ' 
simply  that  had  prevented  her  from  being  so  es- 
teemed by  the  purblind  masculine  prejudice  which 
had  theretofore  dominated  people's  minds.  Think- 
ing of  what  Jeanne  d'Arc  stands  for  to  us  French- 
men, of  her  place  in  our  imaginations,  of  the  way  in 
which  she  illustrates  for  us  the  puisssance  of  the 
essentially  feminine  element  in  humanity,  I  said  to 
myself  '  No,  the  Americana  and  we  will  never  agree 
about  women.' " 

The  Frenchman  is  apt  to  become  eloquent  in  al- 
lusions to  Joan  of  Arc,  and  French  eloquence,  like 
any  other,  is  sometimes  misleading.  One  may  be 
permitted  to  object  to  our  French  friend's  implica- 
tion here,  that  the  resemblance  between  Joan  of  Arc 
however  conceived  and  the  average  Parisienne  is  at 
least  not  a  superficial  one.  At  the  same  time,  mak- 
ing eveiy  allowance  for  the  difference  between  things 
"as  they  really  are"  and  as  they  seem  to  the  per- 
sons irreparably  committed  to  support  of  them,  it 
is  undoubtedly  true  that  if  not  love  at  least  interest 
in  the  other  sex  plays  a  considerably  larger  part  in 
the  life  of  the  French  than  in  that  of  the  American 
woman.  It  is  certain  that  she  never,  as  so  frequently 
happens  with  us,  considers  herself  independently, 


WOMEN  229 

that  she  has  no  occupations  or  projects  from  which 
men  are  excluded,  that  she  never  contemplates  a 
single  life,  for  example,  except  as  a  fate  hardly  to  be 
borne  with  philosophy  and  likely  to  prove  too 
much  for  her  sagesse.  Society  makes  no  provision 
for  the  vieillefille,  in  the  first  place  ;  in  the  second, 
society  occupies  almost  the  whole  of  life,  absorbs 
almost  every  effort — two  enormous  differences  from 
ourselves.  The  attractiveness  of  the  spinster  with 
us  and  the  position  she  occupies  in  our  society  are 
well-known.  Of  how  many  "  homes"  is  she  not  the 
delight,  of  how  many  "firesides"  is  she  not  the  de- 
corously decorative  adornment !  She  may  or  may 
not  have  had  her  romance  ;  she  may,  that  is  to  say, 
have  courted  or  have  drifted  into  her  position  of 
dignified  singleness  ;  it  is  in  either  case  equally  sure 
that  she  has  not  considered  her  estate  so  "  incom- 
plete "  in  itself,  or  so  disengaged  from  the  structure 
of  society,  as  to  furnish  in  itself  reason  and  motive 
of  exchange  for  another  distinguished  quite  as  much 
by  another  kind  of  duties  as  by  another  order  of 
opportunities.  And  not  only  is  the  Frenchwoman 
prevented  from  taking  such  a  view  as  this  by  the 
society  which  surrounds  her  and  of  which  it  is  a 
prime  necessity  of  her  nature  that  she  should  form 
an  integral  part,  but  she  is  constitutionally  incapable 
of  contentedly  fulfilling  such  a  destiny.  All  her 
instincts  of  expansion — and  she  possesses  these  in 
greater  intensity  than  we  are  apt  to  fancy  is  natural 
to  women — are  hostile  to  it.    The  genius  for  renun- 


230  FRENCH  TRAITS 

ciation  so  conspicuous  in  many  of  o\ii  New  England 
women  is,  in  her  composition,  quite  lacking.  Such 
concentration  as  she  possesses  is,  to  speak  paradox- 
ically, expended  upon  the  exploitation  of  her  expan- 
siveness.  If  by  chance  she  becomes  meillefille  she 
has  a  clear  sense  of  failure.  This  certainly  happens, 
comparatively  rare  as  it  seems  to  us.  And  the 
French  spinster  is  apt  to  be  an  enjoyable  person — 
as  for  that  matter  who  in  France  is  not  ?  But  it 
cannot  have  failed  to  strike  any  Anglo-Saxon  ob- 
server that  she  is  a  wholly  different  kind  of  a  person 
from  her  Anglo-Saxon  analogue.  Almost  invariably 
she  is  either  deoote  or  gauloise.  Most  people's  ex- 
perience probably  is  that  she  is  generally  gauloise^ 
and  one  may  even  be  permitted  to  note  that  in  that 
event  she  is  apt  to  be  exaggeratedly  gauloise.  Pru- 
dishness  is  hardly  ever  exhibited  by  her  except  in 
conjunction  with  religious  devotion.  The  devotes 
apart,  almost  every  vieillefille  after  a  certain  age  is 
reached — the  age  when  marriage  is  no  longer  to 
be  contemplated — feeling  the  formal  eccentricity  of 
her  position  in  society,  makes  a  distinct  break  with 
her  role  of  jeunefille,  and  tacitly  suffers  her  already 
cynically  disposed  milieu  to  infer  that  she  does  not 
really  merit  the  ridicule  she  would  inevitably  re- 
ceive upon  the  supposition  of  her  total  imfamiliar- 
ity,  even  by  reputation,  with  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of 
the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil. 

Single  women,  however,  are,  after  all,  exceptions 
in  France,  and  it  is  only  the  great  contrast  which 


WOMEN  231 

France  presents  in  this  respect  to  those  portions  of 
America  which  are  socially  most  highly  developed 
that  makes  a  consideration  of  the  character  and  po- 
sition of  the  vieille  fille  interesting  or  significant. 
Its  significance  really  consists  in  what  it  suggests 
and  implies  as  to  the  fundamental  differences  which 
separate  French  and  Anglo-Saxon  societies.  Mar- 
ried women,  of  course,  constitute  the  great  bulk  of 
the  feminine  portion  of  French  society.  But  when 
it  is  remembered  that  the  interest  in  the  other  sex 
just  referred  to  is  as  characteristic  of  them  as  of 
their  unmarried  sisters,  it  will  be  immediately  per- 
ceived that  French  society  contrasts  positively  as 
well  as  negatively  with  our  own.  With  us,  it  is 
well  known,  feminine  interest  in  the  other  sex 
ceases  at  marriage.  It  is  frequently  active  enough 
before  that  event,  but  its  cessation  with  the  wedding 
ceremony  is  nearly  universal.  To  many  men  this 
change  comes  with  a  suddenness  that  is  appalling. 
Each  season  witnesses  shoals  of  our  society  beaux 
left  stranded  by  it.  They  seem  never  to  be  able  to 
prepare  for  it  in  advance,  inevitable  as  they  must 
know  it  to  be  ;  to  them  the  disappearance  from  the 
social  circle  (the  arena,  it  might  be  called)  of  a 
young  girl  who  seems  to  have  made  her  selection 
and  thenceforward  to  forget  that  there  was  ever 
any  competition,  comes  always  with  the  force  of  a 
shock.  Furthermore  with  us  feminine  interest  in 
men  ceases  at  marriage  as  absolutely,  with  as  com- 
plete remorselessness,  when  the  marriage  is  of  the 


2^2  FRENCH  TRAITS 

former  beau  as  when  it  is  of  the  foiiner  belle.  To 
this  our  young  men  will  probably  never  "be  able  to 
habituate  themselves  with  philosophy.  However  it 
may  be  with  American  women,  American  men  are 
very  much  hke  other  men,  like  Frenchmen  even  in 
some  respects,  and  the  average  "  society  man's " 
sense  of  sudden  loss,  of  a  support  withdrawn,  an 
activity  paralyzed,  immediately  consequent  upon  his 
marriage  must  be  of  a  nature  calculated  to  effect, 
in  the  long  run,  substantial  changes  in  the  existing 
social  constitution.  To  many  young  men  with  us 
marriage  involves  not  perhaps  a  loss  of  caste,  but 
indubitably  a  loss  of  that  constant  consideration, 
direct  and  indirect,  which  makes  the  possession  of 
caste  desirable  ;  and  this  circumstance  is  perhaps 
the  most  serious  menace  by  which  the  view  of  so- 
ciety as  a  device  for  bringing  marriageable  young 
people  together  is  at  present  threatened.  Our 
young  men  have  nothing  approaching  the  genius 
for  renunciation  of  our  young  women,  and  though 
they  may  long  tolerate  the  retirement  at  marriage 
of  women  from  society — being  largely  reconciled 
thereto  by  the  thought  of  thus  attaining  superior 
domesticity  in  their  own  wives — to  continue  to  sub- 
mit throughout  the  course  of  our  social  evolution 
to  instant  personal  effacement  at  marriage,  to  drop 
at  once  in  universal  feminine  consideration  from 
the  position  of  Adonis  to  that  of  Vulcan,  would  un- 
doubtedly be  too  much  to  expect  of  them. 

In  neither  of  these  ways,  it  need  hardly  be  said, 


WOMEN  233 

does  marriage  affect  French  society.  Marriage  is, 
on  the  contrary,  the  cardinal  condition  of  society  in 
France.  It  might  ahnost  be  called  the  young  girl's 
"  coming-out  party."  It  is,  if  anything,  to  a  woman's 
sense  an  added  attraction  in  a  man  ;  he  is  range  cer- 
tainly, but  certainly  none  the  less  a  man,  association 
with  whom  is,  cceteris  paribus,  as  much  more  agree- 
able than  association  with  a  woman  as  the  elective 
affinity  of  nature  has  contrived  it.  Women's  gen- 
eral interest  in  men,  that  is  to  say,  is  so  far  from 
being  repressed  or  even  restricted  by  marriage  that 
it  is  quickened  by  it,  and  thus  society  in  general  re- 
ceives the  stimulus  of  a  powerful  force  which  with 
us  is  well  known  to  be  almost  altogether  lacking. 
The  entire  French  conception  of  marriage  differs  so 
fundamentally  from  our  own  that  it  is  really  difficult 
for  us  to  appreciate  it.  Probably  most  Americans 
who  have  been  attracted  toward  the  French  have, 
at  some  period  of  their  study  of  French  manners, 
said  to  themselves  :  "  There  must  be  some  error  in 
our  understanding  of  French  marriages.  According 
to  all  accounts  they  are  invariably  and  exclusively 
de  convenance.  They  must  therefore  be  loveless 
marriages.  No  healthful  social  life  such  as  must 
exist  in  France  can  be  based  upon  strict  conformity 
to  such  a  system.  It  must  be,  therefore,  that  the 
accounts  exaggerate.  In  this  detail,  as  in  others, 
we  must  have  been  misled  by  English  prejudices." 
But  the  fact  is  literally  as  it  is  understood  to  be. 
Exceptions  to  the  rule  of  mariages  de  convenance  are 


234  FEENCH  TRAITS 

SO  rare  as  really  not  to  count  at  alL  To  compre- 
hend, however,  that  this  does  not  inevitably  lead  to 
social  stoppage  and  disaster,  it  is  necessary  to  per- 
ceive that  the  same  thing  which  might  result  very 
badly  for  us  does  not  necessarily  result  badly  for 
people  who  are  so  very  diflferent  from  us  as  the 
French  are.  And  this  is  an  extremely  difficult  mat- 
ter ;  it  is  always  difficult  to  realize  that  maxims 
which  we  have  conquered  for  oiirselves  have  not.  a 
universal  validity.  The  conception  of  mariage  de 
convenance  by  no  means  excludes  the  idea  of  love. 
Neither  does  the  practice.  No  young  girl  in  France 
looks  forward  to  not  loving  her  husband.  She  sim- 
ply expects  to  learn  to  love  him  after  marriage  as 
our  young  girls  are  expected  to  do  before  as  well 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  this 
expectation  is  justified.  Parents  and  society  see  to 
it  that  it  shall  be  justifiable,  and  the  result — always 
of  course  a  lottery — is  made  dependent  on  old  heads 
instead  of  on  yotmg  hearts.  To  our  criticism  of  the 
working  of  their  system,  the  French  retort  in  kind 
with  unconvinced  obstinacy.  They  assert  that  cer- 
tain lamentable  and  undeniable  phenomena  are  di- 
rect results  of  our  system  and  observe,  truly  enough, 
that  from  these  at  least  theirs  is  free.  To  our  re- 
joinder that  this  may  be  so,  but  that  their  concep- 
tion of  marriage,  however  salutary,  is  terribly  unro- 
mantic,  their  answer  would  undoubtedly  be  that  we 
are  altogether  too  romantic.  And  this  is  really  our 
difference  from  the  French  in  this  matter — that  we 


WOMEN  235 

conceive  marriage  sentimentally,  namely,  and  they 
as  an  aflfair  of  reason  ;  and  from  reason  to  conve- 
nance  is  always  an  incredibly  short  step  in  France. 
Individualism  is  a  force  so  nearly  unknown  in 
France,  collective  and  corporate  authority  is  such  a 
constant  and  intimate  one,  the  entire  social  struc- 
ture is  so  elaborately  organized  for  the  general 
rather  than  the  particular  good,  that  to  leave  even  so 
particular  a  matter  as  man-iage  wholly  to  the  whim 
of  the  persons  directly  interested  would  be  foreign 
to  the  national  proclivities.  No  sentiment  is  too  sa- 
cred, no  feeling  too  intimate,  to  be  thus  centrally  ad- 
ministered, as  it  were,  by  society.  If  they  are  sacred 
and  intimate  enough  and  for  any  reason — often  for  a 
reason  which  might  to  us  appear  frivolous — intensely 
enough  recalcitrant  to  the  code,  their  violation  of  it 
will  be  tolerated  and  even  applauded.  But  the  no- 
tion that  the  code  should  not  deal  with  the  subject  at 
all  would  be  esteemed  as  absurd  as  we  should  esteem 
it  to  disparage  marriage  though  permitting  divorce. 
The  French  marriage  being  thus  distinctly  not 
the  affair  of  sentiment  which  it  is  with  us,  the  ideal 
formed  for  a  woman's  deportment  within  its  bonds 
differs  proportionally  from  that  to  which  we  hold 
our  married  women.  Of  the  strictness  of  the  latter 
one  hardly  needs  to  be  reminded.  The  husband 
himself  insists  upon  it  with  virtuous  sufficiency. 
The  wife  herself  admires  this  attitude  in  him.  He 
becomes  in  a  way  her  spiritual  director,  and  she  in 
some   sense   his  penitent.     Following   his  idea  of 


236  FRENCH   TRAITS 

making  a  companion  of  her,  he  arranges  her  read- 
ing, counsels  the  disposition  of  her  leisure,  modifies 
the  list  of  her  acquaintance,  in  proportion  as  he  at- 
taches value  to  these  things.  If  her  family  have 
been  of  a  different  political  or  religious  faith  from 
his  own,  he  devotes  no  small  labor  to  the  subtle  un- 
dermining of  her  prejudices.  She  is  his  wife,  pre- 
siding over  his  household,  entertaining  his  friends. 
She  sees  the  world  through  his  spectacles — such  of 
it  as  he  permits.  Her  amusements  are  such  as  he 
approves,  her  study  such  as  he  directa  Her  destiny 
and  glory  are  to  be  the  mother  of  his  children,  the 
ornament  of  his  fireside,  his  help-meet  This  at 
least  the  Teutonism  underlying  our  American  chiv- 
ah-y  makes  our  ideal  in  many  instances,  and  in 
these  instances  it  is  reaUzed  by  our  women  with  a 
grace  and  dignity  which  ought,  perhaps,  to  do  more 
than  they  do  to  keep  our  men  up  to  the  mark  of 
realizing  its  counterpart.  There  are  with  us  of 
course  very  few  average  men  who  do  not  expect 
their  wives  to  take  them  at  their  own  valuation — 
very  few  average  women  who  do  not  thus  take  their 
husbands,  at  least  until  they  become  grandmothers. 
Indeed  the  mental  acuteness  and  moral  independ- 
ence of  our  women  are  in  many  cases  pitched  to  a 
considerably  lower  key  than  even  this  ;  they  are  ex- 
pected to  and  do  take  their  husbands  not  merely  at 
the  self-valuation  of  these  latter,  but  at  the  valua- 
tion fixed  by  marital  diplomacy  as  well  as  by  mari- 
tal conceit.     There  is  indeed  to  some  extent  with  us 


WOMEN  vm 

an  unconfessed  bv";  perfectly  recognized  freema- 
sonry of  husbands,  having  for  its  object  the  pres- 
ervation in  the  fairer  sex  of  illusions  as  to  the 
sterner.  Treachery  to  this  is  extremely  uncommon, 
and  is  regarded  as  almost  base  by  the  occasional 
traitor  himself.  It  is  painful  to  the  American  hus- 
band to  witness  the  absence  of  similar  illusions  in 
the  Frenchwoman.  The  discovery  of  her  opinion  of 
the  opposite  sex  and  her  complacent  acquiescence 
therein  comes  to  him  with  a  certain  shock  ;  it  is 
some  time  before  he  recovers  from  it  and  again  per- 
mits himself  to  be  attracted  by  what  to  him  seems 
the  uncomfortable  paradox  of  blasee  femininity.  It 
is  important  to  distinguish,  however,  that  the  ab- 
sence of  illusions  in  the  Frenchwoman  as  to  mascu- 
line qualities  by  no  means  implies,  as  a  similar  ab- 
sence might  be  taken  to  imply  with  us,  a  more  or  less 
brutal  disillusionizing  process  as  having  taken  place 
and  left  its  scar  and  stain  upon  feminine  freshness. 
The  Frenchwoman  is  simply  almost  never  naive,  in 
great  things  any  more  than  in  small.  The  French 
ideal  excludes  naivete,  and  from  a  French  point  of 
view  she  is  never  more /emme  than  when  she  is  least 
naive  ;  to  be  naif  is  the  next  thing  to  being  insig- 
nificant, and  to  be  insignificant  is  ignominy. 

One  effect  of  this  attitude  is  to  make  the  French- 
woman much  more  serious  in  an  intellectual  sense 
than  is  possible  to  women  whose  cherishing  of  illu- 
sions is  systematic.  They  are  far  more  nearly  at 
the  centre  of  the  situation  ;  their  comprehension  of 


238  FRENCH  TRAITS 

motives  is  far  wider,  their  acquaintance  with  socio- 
logical data  and  causes  far  more  intimate.  They 
are  far  less  dependent  upon  their  emotions  in  the 
exercise  of  their  judgment ;  and  thus  a  perfect  ac- 
quaintance with  the  facts  and  their  bearings  in  any 
given  case,  and  with  the  great  mass  of  material  to 
which  secondarily  and  indirectly  any  given  case  is 
to  be  referred,  and  by  which  in  large  measure  it  is 
to  be  judged,  relieves  them  of  this  one  great  re- 
proach which  among  us  is  constantly  addressed  to 
women  who  make  any  attempt  to  discuss  serious  top- 
ics. They  are  in  no  wise  driven  to  the  makeshift  of 
making  up  by  the  intensity  of  emotion  for  imperfect 
comprehension.  In  fine,  whereas  we  seek  the  artifi- 
cial stimulus  for  certain  virtues  in  what  may  be  fan- 
cifully called  a  "protective  policy"  as  applied  to 
women,  the  French  are  believers  in  social  free  trade, 
with  individual  competition  and  survival  of  the  soci- 
ally fittest  the  only  winnowing  principle  recognized. 
And  the  characteristic  effect  of  each  theory  is  by 
no  means  confined  to  women  alone,  or  to  women  and 
what  passes  for  society  in  general.  It  is  very  mark- 
ed upon  the  men  considered  apart — as  with  us  they 
have  to  be  considered  in  so  many  relations.  It  is  of 
course  impossible  to  make  of  an  entire  sex  a  class 
by  itself  which,  unconsidered  in  any  but  the  domes- 
tic and  decorative  functions  of  life,  shall  have  no  in- 
fluence upon  the  habits  of  thought  and  the  courses 
of  conduct  of  the  other  sex  in  even  those  matters 
with  which  the  latter  exclusively  charges  itsell     In 


WOMEN  239 

a  general  and  vague  way  we  are  so  far  from  denying 
this  that  we  make  a  merit  of  sustaining  the  con- 
trary. It  is  indeed  because  we  value  so  much  what 
is  called  ' '  the  purifying  influence  of  woman  "  that 
we  like  to  keep  her  so  far  removed  from  the  dust 
and  stain  of  street  or  forum  discussion.  But  now 
and  then  this  remoteness  not  only  acts  upon  them- 
selves in  the  way  just  indicated — throws  them  back 
upon  pure  feeling  in  matters  of  pure  judgment,  that 
is  to  say  ;  it  gives  a  decided  twist,  a  divergence  of 
marked  eccentricity  to  the  movement  of  exclusively 
masculine  thought  and  discussion.  Men  who  are 
very  much  with  women  and  very  little  in  the  world 
betray  this  influence  upon  their  philosophy  quite  as 
much,  often,  as  they  illustrate  in  their  conduct  the 
general  "  purifying  influence."  Instances  are  within 
the  recalling  of  every  reflecting  observer.  They  il- 
lustrate a  state  of  mind  and  temper  analogous  to 
that  of  the  dweller  in  the  country,  as  compared 
with  the  metropolitan,  or  if  one  chooses,  the  "  cock- 
ney "  temper  and  mind  ;  or  that  of  the  Middle  Ages 
philosopher  compared  with  the  modern  sociologist. 
D'Alembert,  says  Mr.  John  Morley,  adopted  instead 
of  the  old  monastic  vow  of  poverty,  chastity,  obedi- 
ence, "the  manlier  substitute  of  poverty,  truth,  lib- 
erty." The  substitute  may  be  more  manly  ;  un- 
doubtedly the  modern  world,  breaking  more  and 
more  completely  with  Middle  Age  ideals,  tends  more 
and  more  so  to  believe.  But  it  is  certainly  not  more 
womanly,  as  we  understand  the  term,  and  in  our  so- 


240  FRENCH   TRAITS 

ciety,  owing  to  the  influence  aforesaid,  many  men 
feel  that  there  is  something  radically  defective  in 
any  social  philosophy  to  which  women — and  women 
as  we  make  them — do  not  subscribe. 

Very  shght  analogy  of  this  influence  is  to  be  en- 
countered in  France.  And  the  reason,  many  per- 
sons will  say,  is  because  women  as  such  have  no  in- 
fluence in  France,  because  France  is  socially  organ- 
ized entirely  with  a  view  to  the  interest  and  pleasure 
of  men.  One  hears  that  constantly  from  Americans 
in  Paris.  "Women  are  not  admitted  to  the  orchestra 
chairs  of  some  of  the  theatres.  In  omnibuses  and 
tramways  place  aux  dames  is  a  satirical  phrase  de- 
noting a  civihty  far  from  the  heart  of  the  ordinary 
French  male.  The  cabs  charge  upon  both  sexes 
alike.  The  divorce  law,  so  long  withheld  in  the  in- 
terest of  men,  with  its  proposition  odiously  unjust 
to  women  so  nearly  adopted,  the  arguments  on 
either  side  during  the  debate,  were  excellent  illus- 
trations of  the  general  feeling.  The  vice  most  in- 
imical to  women  is  licensed  and  regulated  for  the 
benefit  of  men.  Women's  fate  in  the  highest  as 
well  as  in  the  lowest  social  circle  is  to  be  pursued 
by  man — pursued,  too,  brutally  and  prosaically.  In 
marriage  it  is  the  men  who  are  mercenary.  What 
American  in  France,  I  say,  has  not  heard  a  great 
deal  of  this  from  his  travelHng  countrywomen  ? 
The  Frenchman's  answer  to  it  all  is  that  it  is  super- 
ficial and  iminteUigent,  and  he  attributes  such  criti- 
cism to  what  he  deems  our  habit  of  sepai-ating  the 


WOMEN  241 

sexes  in  thought  and  in  fact,  which  in  its  turn  he 
thinks  attributable  to  our  not  having  fully  emerged 
from  the  pioneer  stage  of  civilization  wherein  men 
and  women  have  markedly  distinct  functions  to  per- 
form and  demand  markedly  distinct  treatment  and 
consideration.  In  an  old  society  such  careful  and 
conscious  distinctions  are  not  needed  ;  like  the 
marching  of  regulars  the  adjustment  takes  care  of 
itself.  At  all  events  what  we  refer  to  as  women's  in- 
fluence upon  man  is  in  such  a  society  less  formal, 
less  immediately  recognizable.  Co-operation  be- 
tween the  sexes  is  so  complete  in  France  that  their 
reciprocal  influences  are,  so  far  as  they  are  obviously 
traceable,  mere  matters  of  detail.  The  position  of 
woman  in  France  at  the  present  time  is  certainly 
one  of  the  results  of  modern  civilization  working 
upon,  socially  speaking,  the  most  highly  developed 
people  of  a  race  which  "  invented  the  muses  and 
chivalry  and  the  Madonna  " — and  of  that  race  the 
people  which  has  produced  by  far  the  greatest  num- 
ber of  eminent  women.  And  if  it  seem  to  us  and 
especially  to  our  travelling  countrywomen  an  un- 
worthy position,  and  inferior  to  that  which  women 
hold  with  us,  the  reason  is  not  to  be  sought  in  the 
absence  of  a  marked  and  rigid  distinction  between 
the  sexes,  in  which  we  ourselves  would  have  to  yield 
the  palm  to  the  Semitic  and  polygamous  peoples, 
who  have  carried  the  idea  to  a  perfection  of  logical 
development  undreamed  of  by  us. 

However,  the  real  answer  to  this  is  that  French- 
16 


242  FRENCH   TRAITS 

women  themselves  are  perfectly  satisfied  with  this 
position.  They  do  not  find  it  humiliating,  as  it  is 
hardly  likely  they  would  fail  to  do,  being  tolerably 
susceptible,  if  there  were  not  some  error  about  its 
being  really  humiliating.  Their  influence  upon  men 
is  perhaps  not  the  less  real  for  being  less  marked.  If 
it  is  not  what  we  mean  by  "purifying  "  it  is  assuredly 
refining.  It  is  as  hostile  to  grossness  as  women's  in- 
fluence with  us  is  to  immorality.  Indeed  it  is  to  this 
influence  that  is  to  be  distinctly  ascribed  the  los- 
ing by  vice  of  half  its  evil,  to  recall  Burke's  phrase. 
"  His  wife,  I  find,  is  acquainted  with  the  whole  aflfair. 
This  is  the  woman's  country ! "  exclaims  Gouverneur 
Morris  in  his  Paris  diary  in  1789  ;  and  it  is  only  a 
Frenchman,  I  fancy,  who  would  agree  with  M.  Jules 
Lemaitre,  who  said  the  other  day  that  if  he  could  be 
just  what  he  chose  he  would  be  first  of  all  a  beauti- 
ful woman.  The  conditions  of  the  active  operation 
of  feminine  influence  in  France  are  nearly  the  oppo- 
site of  those  with  us.  They  consist  in  the  co-opera- 
tion before  alluded  to  between  the  sexes,  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  same  social  philosophy  by  men  and 
women,  the  same  opportunities,  the  same  knowledge 
of  motives  and  data,  of  facts  and  general  principles. 
Just  as  with  us  these  conditions  consist  in  a  separa- 
tion and  exaltation  of  woman's  sphere  far  above  con- 
tact with  the  rude  strife  of  natural  passions  and 
complex  interests,  the  intricate  and  absorbing  con- 
flict of  business,  politics,  amusement,  and  ennui  of 
which  the  real  drama  of  human  life  is  composed. 


VII 

THE  ART  INSTINCT 


THE  ART  INSTINCT 


"In  art,"  exclaims  a  French  critic,  M.  Jacques  de 
Biez,  "we  care  more  for  the  true  than  even  for  the 
beautiful  " — ce  qu'il  nousfaut,  c'est  le  vrai  dans  I'art 
plus  encore  que  le  beau.  Nothing  could  be  more  just. 
It  is  precisely  for  this  reason  that  sentimental  and 
poetical  peoples  have  hitherto  wholly  surpassed  the 
French  in  art,  where  the  beautiful  is  of  even  more 
importance  than  the  true ;  Italy  in  plastic  art,  for 
example,  the  Germans  in  music,  the  EngHsh  in  po- 
etry. In  vain  does  Victor  Hugo,  running  down  the 
hst  of  great  poets,  associate  Voltaire  with  Dante  and 
Shakespeare;  in  vain  does  every  French  writer  on 
art,  having  occasion,  in  any  general  way,  to  mention 
Eaphael,  habitually  add  the  name  of  Poussin  :  none 
but  Frenchmen  are  deceived.  Corneille,  Racine, 
Jouvenet,  Le  Sueur,  Lebrun,  Watteau,  Puget,  Jean 
Goujon,  Mignard,  Houdon  are  glorious  names,  but 
they  are  not  to  be  imposed  as  names  of  the  first  class, 
ranking  with  Velasquez,  with  Rembrandt,  with  Mil- 
ton, Donatello,  Leonardo,  Goethe,  when  it  is  "the  art 
of  art "  that  is  in  question.  What  foreigner  has  not 
been  struck  by  the  struggle  which  the  French  can- 
vases in  the  Saloti  carre  of  the  Louvre  make  to  justify 


246  FRENCH  TRAITS 

their  places  in  the  serene  and  lofty  company  of  the 
great  Flemish,  Dutch,  Venetian  masterpieces  ?  One 
looks  at  Jouvenet's  fine  "  Descent  from  the  Cross," 
and  thinks  of  Rubens's  at  Antwerp,  of  Daniele  da 
Volterra's  at  Rome,  of  Sodoma's  at  Sienna,  of  Rem- 
brandt's  at  Munich.  A  glance  from  Le  Sueur's  soft 
"  Saint  Scholastica  "  to  the  gorgeous  Rubens  above 
it,  from  Poussin's  portrait  of  himself  to  Rembrandt's 
"  Saskia,"  from  Rigaud's  "  Bossuet "  to  Holbein's 
"Erasmus,"  from  Gaspar  Poussin's  rural  idyl  to 
Giorgione's,  brings  one  into  a  wholly  different  ses- 
thetic  atmosphere  ;  just  as  turning  from  "  Hemani," 
or  "  Le  roi  s'amuse,"  to  Wordsworth  or  Keats,  or 
from  "  Fra  Diavolo  "  to  "  Oberon,"  does  in  other  de- 
partments of  fine  art.  It  is  the  change  from  the  at- 
mosphere of  the  intelligence  to  that  of  poetry,  from 
an  atmosphere  in  which  the  true  is  insisted  on  to 
the  region  where  the  sense  of  discovery,  the  imagi- 
nation, genius  with  its  unexpectedness  and  its  aspi- 
rations, are  overmasteringly  occupied  with  beauty. 
Metaphysical  critics  will  deny  the  distinction,  per- 
haps, and  remind  us  of  Plato's  definition  of  beauty 
as  merely  "  the  splendor  of  truth,"  but  plain-think- 
ing minds  will  readily  perceive  the  practical  differ- 
ence arising  between  the  art  of  a  nation  which  de- 
votes itself  to  the  splendor,  and  that  of  one  concerned 
chiefly  about  the  constitution,  of  truth.  When  the 
latter  attitude  of  mind,  indeed,  becomes  excessive, 
as  it  has  become  in  France,  the  very  intelligence 
which  is  the  object  of  such  direct  and  concentrated 


THE  ART   INSTINCT  247 

cultivation  suffers  obscuration,  and  the  faculty  itself 
of  appreciation  loses  the  keenness  of  its  edge.  Thus 
Stendiial,  who  passed  his  life  among  the  master- 
pieces of  Italian  art,  and  who  had  a  passion  for  the 
beautiful  which  made  him  the  bitterest  of  the  ci'itica 
of  pure  rhetoric — Stendhal  is  perpetually  finding 
the  sum  of  all  pictorial  qualities  in  Guido.  And 
Fromentin,  an  esprit  delicat,  if  ever  there  was  one, 
discovers  with  every  mark  of  surprise,  and  proclaims 
with  every  sign  of  conscious  temerity,  that  Rem- 
brandt was  an  idealist  in  disguise.  Why  in  dis- 
guise? asks  every  reader  but  the  Frenchman,  the 
devotee  of  order  and  measure,  who  finds  it  astonish- 
ing that  poetry  should  be  extracted  from  ordinarily 
prosaic  material.  Down  to  Delacroix,  French  paint- 
ing is  mainly  a  continuation  of  the  Bolognese  school. 
It  is  precisely  for  the  same  reason  that  the  French 
art  of  the  present  day,  while  it  interests  everyone 
extremely,  moves  and  touches  so  little  anyone  but 
the  French  themselves.  It  is  true  that  French 
painting  and  sculpture  stand  at  the  head  of  contem- 
porary plastic  art.  It  is  true  that  such  sculptors  as 
M.  Rodin  and  M.  Dalou  recall  the  best  days  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance  ;  and  that  from  Delacroix  to 
Degas  is  a  line  of  painters  whose  works  are  as  sure 
of  the  admiration  of  posterity  as  of  their  present 
fame.  And  nowhere  else  is  there  anything  in  con- 
temporary art  to  be  seriously  compared  with  the 
pi'oductions  of  these  men.  There  is  a  fine  landscape 
school  at  The  Hague.     Mr.  Alma  Tadema  is  an  ex- 


248  FRENCH  TRAITS 

tremely  clever  painter,  and  Mr.  Poynter  and  Mr. 
Borne-Jones  are  men  indisputably  provided  with 
what  the  French  call  a  "  temperament."  There  are 
Mr.  Whistler  and  Mr.  La  Farge,  who  are  unclassifia- 
ble,  and  so  entirely  individual  that  to  argue  from 
them  to  their  respective  milieus  would  be  unwarrant- 
able. There  are  Signor  Nono  in  Venice,  and  Signer 
Segantini  in  Milan,  truly  poetic  artists  as  well  as 
thoroughly  equipped  painters,  who  are  sure  one  day 
of  a  fame  of  wider  than  Itahan  extent.  But  putting 
all  these  together  (and  adding  even,  if  any  reader 
chooses,  the  painting  professors  of  Germany),  it  is 
evident  that  they  make  but  an  insignificant  showing 
beside  the  names  first  mentioned  and  those  with 
which  these  are  associated — Carpeaux,  Rude,  Barye, 
Corot,  Courbet,  Rousseau,  Troyon,  and  Millet. 
These  men,  however,  are  wholly  exceptional,  not 
only  in  the  possession  of  conspicuous  genius,  but  in 
the  quality  of  their  genius.  It  cannot  be  said  that 
this  is  not  French — it  is  certainly  nothing  else  ;  but 
it  is  the  kind  of  genius  that  is  the  rare  exception 
in  France,  and  that  makes  its  way  there,  not  amid 
the  favoring  and  forwarding  influences  of  popular 
sympathy,  but  against  the  current  of  opinion  and 
the  whole  drift  of  feeling.  Make  their  way,  too, 
these  men  have  all  done.  The  Institute  might  frown 
on  Barye,  and  the  Salon  juries  reject  IVlillet ;  but  it 
is  idle  to  argue  from  this  hostility,  as  ignorance  so 
frequently  does,  that  France  has  often  failed  to  ap- 
preciate her  most  admirable  artists,  her  most  poetic 


THE   AKT   INSTINCT  249 

and  truly  exalted  talent.  Invariably  they  "  arrive," 
as  the  phrase  is  ;  and  they  arrive  first  in  Paris, 
whei'e  they  have  indeed,  from  the  first,  never  failed 
of  supporters.  M.  Rodin's  most  pronounced  and 
most  uncompromising  work  is  now  in  the  Luxem- 
bourg ;  we  may  one  day  expect  to  see  a  work  by 
Manet  in  the  Louvre.  The  French  mind  is  elastic, 
and  French  public  opinion  tolerant  to  a  degree 
which  shames  the  prejudice  of  other  peoples. 

All  these  considerations,  however,  do  not  at  all 
obscure  the  fact  that  it  is  not  M.  Puvis  de  Cha- 
vannes  that  Paris  really  admires,  but — let  us  not 
say  M.  Bouguereau,  for  that  would  be  unfair,  or  M. 
Cabanel,  or  even  M.  Gerome,  though  each  of  these 
painters  is  honored  in  his  own  country  in  a  way 
which  it  is  difiicult  for  a  foreigner  to  understand. 
Let  us  say  M.  Meissonier.  M.  Meissonier  presides 
without  a  rival  in  French  estimation  generally ;  his 
qualities  are  precisely  those  which  appeal  to  French 
admiration — sanity,  flawless  workmanship,  thorough- 
ly adequate  expression  of  a  wholly  clear  and  digni- 
fied pictox'ial  motive.  Or,  if  his  defective  sense  for 
what  is  poetic  be  pointed  out,  the  Parisian  will  in 
turn  point  to  M.  Henner,  with  whose  art  he  has  in 
general  less  sympathy,  but  whose  poetic  sense  he 
feels  must  be  striking  enough  for  anyone's  taste. 
And  it  is  undeniable  that  the  Salon,  or  even  the 
greater  part  of  the  Luxembourg,  seems,  to  the  sen- 
sitive foreigner  the  aesthetic  side  of  whose  nature 
is  developed  in  any  considerable  degree,  particu- 


250  FRENCH  TRAITS 

larly  lacking  in  those  elements  which  place  the 
plastic  arts  in  the  same  category  with  music  and 
poetry.  The  trail  of  the  conventional  is  apparent 
on  every  hand.  Original  inspiration,  of  whatever 
character,  is  infrequent.  The  faculties  are,  in  the 
vast  majority  of  instances,  mainly  occupied  and  oc- 
casionally exhausted  in  technical  expression.  With 
the  idea,  the  sentiment,  the  theme,  the  artist  does 
not  concern  himself  in  anything  like  the  same  de- 
gree. As  to  this,  he  selects  rather  than  invents, 
and  his  material  is  inexhaustible.  France  is  the 
only  country  which  has  kept  alive  the  Renaissance 
tradition,  and  consequently  education  in  France 
means  familiarity  with  a  far  greater  number  of  ar- 
tistic generalizations,  of  precedents,  and  authorities, 
than  exist  elsewhere.  Speaking  loosely,  it  may  be 
said  that,  of  every  problem  which  the  French  artist 
attacks,  he  knows  in  advance  various  authoritative 
and  accepted  solutions.  Irresistibly  he  is  impelled 
to  take  advantage  of  these.  He  could  not,  if  he 
would,  go  over  the  whole  ground  for  himself  as  if 
it  were  virgin  soil.  Inevitably  his  zest  for  discovery 
is  less  vivacious,  and  the  edge  of  his  impulse  dulled. 
He  counts  the  less  personally  for  his  acquisitions  ; 
his  equipment  saps  his  original  force  ;  he  cares  less 
about  subject  and  more  about  treatment.  Incom- 
petence is  what  he  most  dreads  in  the  general  com- 
petition. To  avoid  appearing  ridiculous  is  as  much 
an  anxiety  of  the  artist  as  of  any  other  Frenchman. 
He  holds  himself,  therefore,  well  in  hand,  and  pro- 


THE  ART   INSTINCT  251 

ceeds  systematically.  He  surrenders  himself  to  no 
afflatus  but  that  of  science.  In  every  department 
of  artistic  effort,  then,  where  training  is  salutary 
and  education  possible — that  is  to  say,  not  merely 
in  method  but  in  general  attitude — the  French  art- 
ist excels.  Freak,  fantasticality,  emotional  exube- 
rance are  nearly  unknown.  Les  incoherents  are 
mainly  practical  jokers,  and  the  rest  gain  no  accept- 
ance. In  this  way,  as  the  epoch  changes  in  taste, 
seriousness,  ideas,  objects  of  interests,  Lebrun, 
Boucher,  David,  M.  Meissonier,  are  successively  de- 
veloped. And  to-day  the  French  appreciation  of 
M.  Meissonier — the  French  feeling  that  he  is  the 
fine  flower  of  what  in  France  is  most  confidently 
believed  in — has  become  in  fact  a  cult.  It  would 
scarcely  be  fanciful  to  find  something  religious  in 
the  intelligent  idolatry  of  the  daily  crowd  at  M. 
Meissonier's  exhibition  of  his  works  a  few  years 
ago.  The  Galerie  Petit  was  a  temple.  M.  Meis- 
sonier himself  conceives  his  mission  in  eminently 
hierarchical  fashion. 

In  fine,  the  lack  of  personal  quality  born  of  the 
social  instinct,  and  illustrated  in  French  manners, 
shows  itself  in  French  art  as  well,  and  has  done  so 
from  the  time  of  Francis  I.,  when  classicism  was 
born  in  full  panoply  instead  of,  like  its  Italian  foster- 
mother,  attaining  classic  stature  through  natural 
stages  of  gi'owth.  The  arts  of  comedy  and  conver- 
sation aside,  in  which  personality  is  almost  obliter- 
ated and  the  social,  appreciative,  and  purely  intel- 


262  FRENCH   TRAITS 

lectual  faculties  are  most  actively  engaged,  French 
art  does  not  in  general  contain  enough  personal 
flavor  to  escape  conventionality.  To  thus  escape  it 
depends  on  its  geniuses,  its  wholly  exceptional 
names.  Certainly  strenuous  personality  is  sure  to 
•per^er  — to  come  to  the  surface — and  its  ability  to 
issue  from  the  mass  to  which  culture  gives  a  con- 
ventional uniformity,  is  excellent  test  and  witness 
of  its  quality.  A  triumph  over  the  Institute  affirms 
an  artist's  force  and  fortifies  his  vitality  as  nothing 
else  can.  And  it  is  equally  true  that  where  art  is 
classic  and  its  following  popular,  more  individuals 
practise  it,  and  the  chances  of  thus  developing  an 
exceptional  personality  are  proportionally  increased. 
But  these  considerations,  however  obvious,  are  more 
or  less  speculative,  and  the  fact  remains  that  not 
only  the  mass  of  French  art,  but  the  portion  of  it 
which  is  at  once  most  characteristic  and  most  cor- 
dially appreciated  by  the  French  public,  is  alto- 
gether too  impersonal  to  be  poetic. 

Personality,  I  take  it,  is  of  the  essence  of  poetry. 
Wherever  the  note  of  culture  predominates  and  the 
individual  is  subordinated,  poetry  suffers.  The  per- 
sonality may  be  illusory,  and  "  barbaric  yawps  "  as 
unaccompanied  by  poetry  as  by  culture.  But  there 
is  no  poetry  without  sentiment  and  feeling,  and  sen- 
timent and  feeling  mean  individuality  accentuated 
in  proportion  to  their  intensity.  The  intellect  is  in 
comparison  impersonality  itself.  Less  personal,  less 
concentrated,  and  less  sentimental  than  any  other 


THE   ART   INSTINCT  253 

people's,  French  expression  in  every  department  of 
art  is  less  poetic  also.  Wordsworth's  objection  to 
Goethe's  poetry,  that  it  was  not  "inevitable  enough" 
is  appHcable  to  all  French  art.  "  Possession  "  im- 
plies not  less,  but  more  personality,  since  it  means 
an  intensification  of  the  sentimental,  incommuni- 
cable, individual  side  of  the  poet's  nature,  and  its 
proportionate  emancipation  from  control  by  the 
definite  and  rational  standards  which  mankind  en- 
joy in  common.  "  Superiority  of  intellect,"  Carlyle 
notes  as  Shakespeare's  distinguishing  characteris- 
tic, but  his  Protean  personality  is  rather  what  sep- 
arates Shakespeare  from  other  giants  of  intellect, 
and  this  indeed  is  what  we  really  mean  by  calling 
his  art  "objective."  Just  as  in  the  instance  of  the 
" objective "  Goethe,  the  "Gedichte"  and  "Faust" 
are  called  immortal  works  by  Goethe's  most  incis- 
ive critic,  who  says  that  here  only  is  Goethe  "  truly 
original  and  thoroughly  superior,"  because  "  they 
issue  from  a  personal  feeling  and  the  spirit  of  sys- 
tem has  not  petrified  them."  Perfectly  impersonal 
art  is  infallibly  marked  by  convention,  and  conven- 
tion is  the  implacable  foe  of  poetry  everywhere.  It 
is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  friend  and  ally  of  prose,  of 
what  is  communicable  and  rational. 

Frenchmen  resent  being  told  that  their  genius  for 
prose  is  a  possession  which  involves  an  incapacity 
for  poetry,  an  insensitiveness  to  what  is  intimately 
poetic.  But  they  must  pay  in  this  way  for  their 
highly-developed    social    and    rational   side.      "As 


254  FRENCH   TRAITS 

civilization  advances,  poetry  almost  necessarily  de« 
clines,"  says  Macaulay  ;  which  is  perhaps  too  gen- 
eral a  statement,  considering  the  coincidence  of  civ- 
ilization and  poetry  of  the  very  highest  order  at  one 
moment,  at  least,  in  the  race's  history.  But  M. 
Scherer  is  undoubtedly  right,  speaking  for  France 
alone,  in  doubting  v^hether  "our  modern  society 
will  continue  to  have  a  poetry  at  all."  M.  Francis- 
que  Sarcey,  who  is  in  general  good  nature  itself,  be- 
comes almost  irritated  at  an  English  judgment  of 
Victor  Hugo  maintaining  that  Hugo  is  a  great  ro- 
mancer rather  than  a  true  poet.  Yet  in  his  charm- 
ing "  Souvenirs  de  Jeunesse,"  having  to  confess  that 
he  has  made  verses,  he  exclaims  :  "Where  is  the 
man  who  can  flatter  himself  that  he  knows  the  lan- 
guage of  prose,  if  he  has  not  assiduously  practised 
that  of  poetry  ?  "  And  he  adds,  "  One  learns  the 
happy  choice  of  words,  the  number  of  the  phrase, 
and  the  grace  of  felicitous  expression  only  in  forg- 
ing his  style  on  the  hard  anvil  of  the  Alexandrine." 
La  penible  enclume  de  V alexandrin  !  Fancy  an  Eng- 
lish or  American  writer  of  M.  Sarcey's  eminence 
speaking  in  that  way  of  what  a  French  critic  calls 
"  the  majestic  English  iambic."  "  On  n'est  trahi 
que  par  les  siens,"  according  to  the  French  pro- 
verb. This  statement  of  M.  Sarcey's  hits  the  nail 
exactly  on  the  head.  Poetry  is  in  France  an  exer- 
cise, not  an  expression.  It  is  to  real  French  expres- 
sion, to  prose,  what  gymnastics  and  hygiene  are  to 
health.     And  not  only  is  this  true  of  the  verses  of 


THE   ART   INSTINCT  255 

the  litterateur  forging  his  proso  on  the  anvil  of  the 
ten-syllable  couplet,  the  litterateur  of  whom  '^L 
Sarcey  may  be  taken  as  the  type,  but  of  the  poeta 
themselves  it  is  true  that  poetry  is  conceived  and 
handled  by  them  as  something  external  rather  than 
native,  something  whose  qualities  they  are  felici- 
tously to  illustrate  rather  than  to  employ  sympathet- 
ically and  spontaneously  for  illustration  of  the  idea 
or  emotion  seeking  expression.  Conceived  in  this 
way,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  the  form  became  tyran- 
nical, how  the  despotism  of  the  Alexandrine  arose. 
And  we  may  certainly  say  that  conceived  in  this  way 
it  never  would  have  been,  but  for  the  national  genius 
for  highly-developed  regularity  and  symmetry  of 
form,  for  clearness,  compactness,  measure,  and  bal- 
ance, for  forging  its  fine  prose,  in  a  word,  on  the 
anvil  of  the  Alexandrine. 

But  for  form  the  French  have  an  unrivalled  sense 
— a  sense  which  unites  them  closely  to  the  antique 
and  to  the  Italian  Kenaissance.  If  they  have  not  the 
highest  substance,  they  have  the  severest  expression 
of  any  modem  people  ;  if  they  are  the  least  poetic, 
they  are  certainly  the  most  artistic.  I  know  that 
nowadays  the  latter  epithet  is  frequently  used  in 
a  rigidly  esoteric  sense.  But  such  terms  have  a 
literary  as  well  as  a  professional  and  pedantic  value, 
and  no  one  will  fail  to  seize  the  distinction  here 
hinted  at,  however  he  may  himself  identify  artistic 
with  poetic.  The  one  means  keeping  one's  self 
well   in   hand,   and  the    other   abandon  and   exal- 


256  FRENCH   TRAITS 

tation  ;  one  is  constructive,  the  other  inventive  ;  one 
manipulates,  the  other  discovera  In  this  sense, 
then,  "  artistic  "  may  be  used  to  describe  the  French- 
man's universal  attitude.  He  is  disinclined  to  ac- 
cept nature  in  any  of  her  phases  or  aspects.  His 
passion  is  to  arrange,  to  modify,  to  combine.  He 
is  ineradicably  synthetic.  His  gardens,  parks,  farms, 
the  entire  surface  of  France,  in  fact,  are  landscape 
compositions.  At  Hampton  Court  you  are  in  the 
presence  of  the  natural  forces  ;  at  Versailles  or  St. 
Cloud,  of  artistic  ones.  That  adliance  with  nature 
through  the  inspiration  of  sentiment,  which  gives 
such  repose  and  delight  to  every  other  nationality, 
the  Frenchman  takes  no  satisfaction  in.  It  does 
not  call  for  that  active  exercise  of  his  intellectual 
faculties  which  is  necessary  to  his  enjoyment.  And 
it  seems  to  him  rudimentary  and  formless.  He  is 
as  intensely  himian  as  he  is  impersonal,  and  nature 
outside  of  man  and  unmoulded  by  man's  influence 
interests  him  only  scientifically.  She  is  emphatic- 
ally not  something  to  be  enjoyed  in  itself,  but  ar- 
tistic material  rather,  lying  more  or  less  ready  to 
the  artist's  hand,  but  demanding  co-ordination  and 
organizing  before  becoming  truly  worthy  of  contem- 
plation. The  hap-hazard,  the  fortuitous,  what  we 
call  the  picturesque,  either  jar  on  the  French  sense 
or  strike  it  as  insufficient  and  elementary.  Naples, 
Andalusia,  London  are  picturesque.  They  are  form- 
less, full  of  the  unexpected,  full  of  color,  physical 
and  moral     They  are  in  these  respects  in  complete 


THE   AKT   INSTINCT  257 

contrast  to  Paris  and  the  provinces,  where  every 
aspect  is  ordered  and  the  coup-d'ceil  on  every  hand 
artistically  organic.  Here  nothing  is  left  to  itself 
in  any  department  of  possible  human  activity. 
"  The  trouble  with  the  French,"  said  an  Italian  fel- 
low-traveller to  me  once,  "is  that  they  can  leave 
nothing  alone.  They  charge  you  more  for  potatoes 
a  a  naturel  than  for  potatoes  served  in  any  other 
way."  \ 

French  art  is  thus  naturally  characterized  more 
by  style  than  substance.  It  insists  upon  what  Buf- 
fon  calls  "order  and  movement"  more  than  upon 
motive.  It  addresses  itself  to  the  intellect  mainly 
rather  than  to  the  sense  or  the  susceptibility. 
French  painting  occupies  itself  more  than  any  art 
except  that  of  the  Dutch  masters  with  subtle  values, 
which  give  a  refined  intellectual  pleasure.  The 
magic  of  color  or  composition  which  moves  and  the 
sensuousness  which  charms  are  quite  lacking.  It  is 
in  line  and  mass,  and  light  and  shade,  and  deHcate 
adjustments  of  harmonious  tones  that  French  paint- 
ing excels.  Baudry  passes  for  grandiose,  and  Bou- 
guereau  for  subtile,  spite  of  the  eclecticism  of  the 
one  and  the  emptiness  of  the  other,  fundamentally 
considei'ed,  because,  abstractedly  and  impersonally 
considered,  mass  and  line  respectively  are  thus 
handled  by  them.  The  excess  of  a  devotion  to 
form  is  precisely  this  traditionalism  and  inanity. 
The  excess  of  a  devotion  to  color  is  violence.  Vio- 
leHce  of  any  kind  is  instinctively  repugnant  to  the 
17 


258  FRENCH  TRAITS 

French  sense.  It  is  Ingres,  and  not  Delacroix,  that 
permanently  attaches  and  really  interests  his  coun- 
trymen. Delacroix  seems  to  them  not  merely  ro- 
mantic ;  he  seems  violent  Theophile  Gautier,  him- 
self a  thorough  romanticist,  calls  Tintoretto  le  roi  des 
fougiieux — quite  missing  the  ineffable  sweetness  and 
distinction  of  Tintoretto's  hues  and  poetic  poses. 
There  is  very  little  color  at  the  Sdon ;  although 
there  is  an  immense  amount  of  quality,  and  of  qual- 
ity very  sapiently  understood,  so  that  nature's  color 
filtered  through  the  plein  air  process  is  satisfactorily 
reproduced.  Yet  passed  through  the  alembic  of  the 
painter's  personality,  specially  observed,  insisted  on, 
developed,  it  rarely  is.  "Gray,"  says  M.  de  Biez 
again,  "which  is  the  color  of  the  sky  in  France,  is 
also  the  color  of  truth  itself,  of  that  truth  which 
tempers  the  impetuosity  of  enthusiasm  and  restrains 
the  spirit  within  the  middle  spheres  of  precise  rea- 
son." Nothing  could  more  accurately  attest  the 
French  feeling  in  regard  to  color — the  French  dis- 
trust of  its  riotous  potentialitiea  And,  as  when  one 
looks  constantly  at  one  side  of  any  thing  its  other 
side  escapes  him,  the  Salon  is  not  only  lacking  in 
color,  but  it  frequently  illustrates  how  a  constant 
pre-occupation  with  its  value  leads  to  toleration  of 
very  disagreeable  character  in  color.  The  light  and 
dark  harmony  is  now  and  then  perfect,  while  at  the 
same  time  charm,  perfume,  purely  sensuous  quality 
is  quite  lacking. 
Keats  speaks  somewhere  of  "Lord  Byron's  last 


THE   ART   INSTINCT  259 

flash  poem."  Following  the  lead  of  the  English 
enervated  school  which  one  of  its  admirers  recently 
described  as  trying  to  do  for  painting  what  Keats 
did  for  poetry,  one  very  frequent  notion  of  an  im- 
portant side  of  French  art  is  exactly  expressed  by 
this  epithet.  I  mean  the  decorative  side — every- 
thing in  fact  in  which  severity  does  not  noticeably 
preside.  The  decorative  art  of  the  French  does  in- 
deed oftener  than  not  lend  itself  to  the  rococo, 
though  baroque  it  has  rarely  been.  The  extrava- 
gances of  the  late  Italian,  Spanish,  and  German 
Renaissance  were  but  imperfectly  emulated  in 
France,  where,  with  an  occasional  exception,  such 
as  the  sculpture  of  Puget's  school,  the  keynote  of 
all  the  second-rate  art  since  the  days  of  Goujon's 
and  Delorme's  imitators  has  been  the  academic 
quality.  Vulgarly  sensational,  whimsical,  eccen- 
tric, that  is  to  say  "  flash,"  it  has  never  been  except 
in  that  comparatively  inconsiderable  part  which  has 
always  obtained  infinitely  less  consideration  than 
frivolity  of  the  kind  does  elsewhei-e.  Education  and 
the  subordination  of  idiosyncrasy  make  it  rare  and 
disesteemed.  There  is  nothing  in  France  Hke  the 
cemetery  at  Genoa.  There  is  nothing  like  the  in- 
terior of  the  House  of  Lords,  which  a  recent  French 
writer  compares  to  a  "  thirty-cent  Bohemian -glass 
bazar."  Nor  like  the  spectacle  in  the  same  hall  dur- 
ing au  important  sitting,  "  when  the  Peeresses'  Gal- 
lery is  adorned  with  women  in  blue  dresses,  yellow 
flowers,    red   fans,   and  apple-green   feathers,"  and 


260  FRENCH   TRAITS 

when,  consequently,  he  adds,  "the  Bohemian  glass 
shop  seems  to  have  been  invaded  by  an  assortment 
of  Brazilian  parrots."  And  we  may  afl&rm  that,  even 
to  M.  Charles  Gamier  himself,  who  has  loaded  the 
Nouvel  Opera  at  Paris  with  every  mark  of  luxurious 
elegance  conceivable  or  collectable  by  him,  the  deco- 
ration of  most  American  theatres  and  public  build- 
ings which  antedate  the  present  era  of  fastidious 
and  forceless  eclecticism  would  seem  "  flash "  to 
the  last  degree.  What  we  call  "Salon  nudities" 
are  not  the  catch-pennj'  things  similar  canvases 
would  be  with  us.  Nudity  is  in  no  Latin  country 
the  sensational  thing  it  is  in  the  world  inhabited  by 
the  British  matron  and  the  American  young  person, 
whose  cheek  it  is  traditionally  so  difficult  to  keep 
from  blushing.  In  the  second  place,  the  Salon 
nudities  are  studies  in  the  most  difficult  depart- 
ment of  pictorial  art,  namely,  in  the  painting  of 
flesh ;  and  the  appeal  of  the  painter  concerns  his 
success  in  this,  and  is  directed  to  a  trained  jury  and 
not  at  all  to  people  to  whom  for  climatic  reasons 
nudity  is  a  sensational  thing.  It  is  indeed  doubtful 
if  the  Anglo-Saxon  notion  of  his  motive  and  of  his 
accomplishment  could  be  clearly  conveyed  to  a 
French  painter — all  that  we  are  apt  to  regard  as 
"  flash  "  is  to  him  so  thoroughly  convention. 

In  fine,  so  far  in  general  are  French  painting  and 
sculpture  from  the  extravagant  or  the  wilfully 
meretricious,  that  painting  and  sculpture  may  be 
defined  as,  for  the  French,  the  representation  of 


THE   ART   INSTINCT  261 

ideas  in  form.  Sometimes  the  form  becomes  a 
mere  symbol.  Variations  of  it  are  esteemed  vio- 
lences. But  even  when  it  does  not  reach  this  state 
of  petrifaction  through  system,  it  is  employed 
mainly  to  embody  ideas  rather  than  images,  and 
though  never  morally  didactic,  now  and  then  seems 
to  a  true  child  of  nature  not  a  little  notional  and 
narrow.  "At  the  Institute,"  says  M.  Rodin,  con- 
temptuously, "  they  have  recipes  for  sentiments." 
As  for  character,  style  shrinks  a  little  from  repre- 
senting anything  so  little  systematized,  so  little 
brought  into  harmony  with  itself,  so  complex,  so 
vague  in  outline  and  condensed  in  essence,  so  dis- 
cordant, so  tumultuous.  Geniuses  like  Michael  An- 
gelo  and  Tintoretto,  who  have  a  special  faculty  for 
fusing  style  and  character,  form  and  color,  are  rare. 
Generally  the  artist  leans  toward  one  or  the  other — 
toward  Raphael  or  Rubens,  toward  Leonardo  or 
Velasquez.  The  "  School  of  Athens  "  is  the  exem- 
plar of  French  effort,  minus  its  spirituality,  which  is 
as  foreign  to  the  French  genius,  perhaps,  as  it  is 
sealed  to  Mr.  Ruskin.  Where  we  find  the  artist 
preoccupied  with  character  it  is  apt  to  be  a  little 
factitious,  as  if  he  had  wandered  from,  for  him,  the 
true  path  and  were  engaged  in  an  effort  for  which 
he  was  distinctly  not  born,  a  work  whose  conditions 
are  quite  foreign  to  his  capacities.  Spontaneity 
thus  is  rather  stifled  than  stimulated.  All  formative 
iuflueuces  induce  restraint,  measure,  order,  and  op- 
pose invention  and  experiment.     Even  in  conversa- 


262  FRENCH   TRAITS 

tion  you  hear  the  same  expression,  the  same  joke, 
indefinitely  repeated.  No  one  seeks  to  vary  them 
because  they  have  become  classic,  because  their 
form  is  not  to  be  improved  upon,  and  any  attempt 
in  this  direction  is  foredoomed  to  failure.  Because, 
too,  there  is  such  an  infinite  variety  of  them.  Ex- 
cellence in  this  department  of  activity  depends  upon 
eclectic  taste  and  cultivation  ;  not  at  all  upon  per- 
sonal inventiveness.  An  American  gets  tired  of  "  Je 
vous  le  donne  en  mille,"  "  H  n'y  a  plus  de  Pyrenees," 
and  the  infinitude  of  such  classic  combinations  and 
tradition-enshrouded  expressions.  The  Frenchman 
thinks  no  more  of  them  than  we  do  of  "  yes  "  and 
"  no  "  and  the  ordinary  parts  of  speech  taken  separ- 
ately. He  is  interested  in  further  combinations, 
and  enjoys  dealing  with  the  classic  ones  as  simple 
elements,  so  that  his  result  is  always  far  more  re- 
fined and  developed.  Bat  it  is,  after  all,  wholly  im- 
personal and  artistic ;  his  originality  has  nowhere 
the  chance  of  penetrating  the  substance,  but  exhausts 
itself  in  modifying  the  form.  The  same  thing  is 
true,  not  only  of  plastic  art  and  of  poetry,  but  even 
of  music.  French  music  is  as  scientific  as  Palladian 
architecture.  Distinctly  it  lacks  melody.  It  is  full 
of  ideas,  and  its  form  is  full  of  interest ;  but  com- 
pare not  the  sentiment  of  Saint-Saens  to  that  of 
Schubert,  but  the  counterpoint  of  Berlioz  to  that  of 
Bach. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  predominance  of  the  ele- 
ment of  style  rarely  results  in  the  insipidity  which 


THE  ART   INSTINCT  263 

•elsewhere  seems  the  inevitable  fate  of  the  refugee 
from  the  rococo.  The  devotion  to  form  is  some- 
times tiresome,  as  in  superficial  articles  and  prosy 
books,  where  a  completeness,  not  logical  and  philo- 
sophical like  the  completeness  of  the  Germans,  but 
purely  of  literary  form,  is  sought.  Subject,  which 
is  in  general  made  so  little  of,  is  occasionally 
valued  in  proportion  to  its  hackneyed  and  lifeless 
dignity.  But  insipidity  is  usually  escaped  be- 
cause the  artist's  work  is  always  positive,  and,  how- 
ever conventional,  almost  never  perfunctory.  Even 
if  it  can  be  called  insipid  on  occasion,  its  insipidity 
is  never  stupid.  The  special  training  of  the  artist 
gives  at  least  the  interest  of  competence  in  execu- 
tion, and  his  general  culture,  the  demands  of  the 
environment,  his  familiarity  with  the  best  models, 
ensure  that  its  substance  shall  not  be  contemptible. 
There  is  nowhere  the  flatness,  the  lack  of  accent,  the 
palloi*,  the  wan,  chill,  meagre  aspect  which  charac- 
terizes much  of  our  Protestant  and  polemic  reaction 
from  the  earlier  tropicality.  We  are  no  longer  brutal 
or  boisterous,  but  candor  must  compel  us  to  acknow- 
ledge that  our  artistic  Puritanism  is  a  trifle  bleak. 
It  is  possible  to  avoid  the  commonplace  and  still  be 
uninteresting.  Hound  door-knobs  and  legible  in- 
scriptions may  make  an  insufficient  appeal  to  the 
sensitiveness  which  demands  the  soothing  stimulus 
of  pleasurable  aspect  everywhere,  but  merely  to  de- 
stroy the  roundness  and  the  legibility  results  in 
nothing  positive  enough  to  escape  insipidity.     Dis- 


264  FRENCH   TRAITS 

gust  with  the  painting  of  panoramas  and  the  sculp, 
ture  of  ideal  inanity  does  little  to  justify  itself  by 
resorting  to  equally  empty  possibilities  and  reali- 
ties. French  culture  and  artificiality  save  art  from 
that  spontaneity  which  ends  in  sterility,  M.  Ben- 
jamin Constant's  "  seraglio  "  painting  is  not  truly 
rococo,  nor  is  M.  Jean  Beraud's  realism  insipid.  The 
sense  for  form  indeed  is  equally  a  safeguard  in 
either  instance. 

In  every  artistic  eflfort,  where  the  poetic  note  is 
not  so  imperatively  needed  that  its  absence  is  a  pos- 
itive flaw,  it  would  be  difficult  to  attach  too  much 
value  to  form.  Form  is  the  safeguard  and  quick- 
ener  of  aU  elevated  prose.  If  it  be  not  itself  the 
highest  of  qualities,  if  free  and  forceful  as  it  shows 
itself  in  Greek  sculpture  it  is  even  there  subordi- 
nate to  sentiment  and  color,  it  is  everywhere  and 
always  the  inexorable  condition  of  the  highest  qual- 
ities ;  they  are  useful  to  it — it  is  necessary  to  them. 
And  how  admirable  and  elevating  is  the  prose 
which  in  every  department  of  art  the  French  sense 
for  form  produces !  To  talk  of  French  painting  as 
many  of  our  amateurs  and  artists  do,  and  as  they 
would  of  French  sculpture  were  they  famiUar 
enough  with  it  to  perceive  that  most  of  it  has  the 
same  characteristics,  is  merely  to  exhibit  blindness 
for  a  number  of  excellent  qualities  which,  whatever 
they  fail  in,  at  least  save  French  art  from  the  pure 
caprices  which  many  of  our  artists  and  amateurs 
execute  and  admire.     As  the  national  turn  for  in- 


THE  ART  INSTINCT  265 

telligence  prevents  life  in  France  from  being  taken 
en  amateur,  so  the  national  sense  for  form  prevents 
amateurishness  in  French  art.  Our  art  students  go 
to  Paris  for  instruction  in  technic,  but  it  is  a  pity 
that  they  so  universally  content  themselves  with 
that,  and  so  rarely  acquire  there  the  general  artistic 
cultivation  which  is  there  as  much  a  mark  of  pro- 
fessional excellence  as  is  excellence  of  technic.  Very 
seldom  is  a  painter  like  Mr.  Bridgman,  let  us  say, 
a  painter  who  understands  his  capacities  as  well  as 
his  tastes — a  thoroughly  professional  painter,  in  a 
word — returned  to  us  by  Paris  itself  out  of  the  va- 
ried and  abundant  material  we  send  her.  In  the 
vast  majority  of  cases  she  sends  us  back  amateurs — 
the  same  amateurs  who  sought  her  schools,  im- 
mensely better  equipped  in  technic,  but,  in  pretty 
exact  proportion  to  their  individuality,  preserving 
still  the  notions,  whims,  and  ambitions  with  which 
they  set  out — the  visions,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  in- 
curable amateur.  Hence  our  art,  spite  of  the  very 
great  improvement  in  technic  within  the  past  dozen 
years,  still  remains  essentially  the  experimentation 
which  it  has  been  from  the  first.  Our  artists  are  as 
anxious  as  ever  to  reconstruct  the  basis  of  art,  to 
give  it  in  their  practice  a  national  and  personal  fla- 
vor, to  be  racial  and  individual,  to  display  original- 
ity, and  to  do  all  this  fundamentally  and  radically 
quite  without  regard  to  the  immutable  decorum  of 
evolution,  and  in  defiance  rather  than  through  the 
aid  of  culture.     Europe  has  constantly  been  saying 


266  FRENCH   TRAITS 

to  us  at  every  international  exhibition,  "Be  less  im- 
itative. Give  us  something  new,  some  'new  birth 
of  your  new  soil.'  "  And  quite  unconscious  that 
European  interest  in  our  art  is  one  mainly  of  curi- 
osity, and  forgetful  of  the  fact  that  our  new  soil, 
whatever  its  capacities  for  producing  great  natural 
triumphs  from  human  character  to  railroads,  from 
the  very  fact  that  it  is  new  demands  careful  culture 
to  produce  anything  so  artificial  as  fine  art,  we 
have  gone  about  being  racial  and  individual  by 
pointedly  neglecting  culture  and  by  breaking  defini- 
tively with  tradition. 

Culture  has  been  acutely  defined  as  "  the  power 
of  doing  easily  what  you  don't  like  to  do."  Of  cul- 
ture in  this  sense  our  artists,  in  general,  have  not, 
I  think,  a  sympathetic  comprehension.  Doing 
painfully  what  they  nevertheless  like  exceedingly 
to  do,  describes  rather  their  practice.  "Wliat  they 
like  to  do,  at  any  rate,  not  at  all  what  they  are 
fitted  to  do,  is  the  rule  of  their  efibrt.  And  it 
is  the  unfailing  trait  of  the  amateur.  No  amount 
of  cleverness  can  prevent  the  result  from  insecu- 
rity, from  essential  triviality,  from  having  that 
ephemeral  quality  characteristic  of  pure  experimen- 
tation. Like  the  cleverness  of  Walt  Whitman's 
defiance  of  culture,  only  for  a  time  can  it  conceal 
the  essential  elementariness,  the  really  rudimentary 
attitude  of  mind  which  conceit  leads  naivete  to  mis- 
take for  Jinesse.  Curious  conception  of  the  relations 
of  means  to  ends  our  amateur  artists  and  their 


THE   ART   INSTINCT  267 

amateur  admirers  must  entertain,  in  conceiving  our 
formlessness  of  sufficient  substance  to  revolutionize 
the  judgment  of  the  ages  as  to  form  and  fitness. 
Interested  as  Europe  may  be  in  seeing  us  more 
"  original,"  we  may  be  sure  we  shall  never  compel 
her  obeisance  to  amateur  originality,  to  "  origi- 
nality "  painfully  retesting  the  exclusions  which 
mark  the  progress  of  culture  and  imagining  itself 
inventive.  The  inexpressible  flatness  which  coexists 
with  our  lack  of  sobriety,  of  measure,  of  form  is 
grotesque.  We  can  all  nowadays  recognize  this 
quality  in  our  yesterday's  art — in  the  architecture 
which  aimed  at  effects  in  "  frozen  music  "  that  would 
have  been  the  despair  of  the  flamboyant  Gothic 
epoch;  in  the  sculpture  which  attempted  to  unite 
repose  and  action,  the  "  far  off"  and  the  familiar,  in 
a  way  which  Phidias  and  Donatello  were  too  pru- 
dent to  essay  ;  in  the  painting  which,  despising  Na- 
ture considered  as  merely  artistic  material,  surprised 
her  in  her  own  pictorial  moods  and  endeavored  to 
surpass  her  in  intensifications  of  autumn  color,  ex- 
aggerations of  sierras,  volcanoes,  and  cataracts, 
arrangements  of  woodland  cascades,  romantic  pools, 
"coming  storms,"  and  sentimental  genre  situations, 
— endeavored,  in  fine,  to  "paint  the  lily"  with  an 
impasto  touch,  the  mere  notion  of  which  would  have 
startled  Claude  and  dismayed  Rembrandt.  But  we 
are  quite  blind  to  the  same  quality  in  our  current 
art,  which  displays  in  its  own  way  the  same  mental 
preoccupation  with  the  search  for  the  philosopher's 


268  FRENCH   TRAITS 

stone  and  perpetual  motion,  in  complete  neglect  of 
the  cautious  dictates  of  scientific  discovery. 

The  amateur  view  of  art,  of  its  functions  and 
character,  pervades  the  pubUc  as  well  as  the  profes- 
sion, which  is  thus  at  once  measurably  excused  for 
and  encouraged  in  its  superficiality.  Mr.  Howells 
draws  up  a  list  of  short  story  writers,  embroidered 
with  laudatory  comment  calculated  to  make  several 
dozen  people  imagine  themselves  the  equals  of 
Merim6e  and  Maupassant.  It  is  followed  promptly 
by  a  catalogue  of  poets  from  an  equally  friendly 
hand,  which  pleads  for  a  more  attentive  audience 
for  as  many  as  forty-one  "poets,"  few  of  whom 
have  ever  suffered  for  the  want  of  a  meal,  a  new 
suit  of  clothes,  or  a  theatre-ticket,  have  ever  com- 
mitted a  serious  moral  indiscretion,  know  either 
pain,  ecstasy,  or  remorse,  have  ever  experienced 
any  deep  emotional  perturbation,  or  enjoyed  any 
unusual  spiritual  excitement,  and  whose  culture 
is  shown  by  their  product  to  correspond  to  their 
experience.  The  popular  and  good-natured  criti- 
cism which  thus  rescues  our  litterateurs  and  poets 
from  any  peril  of  self-depreciation,  and  keeps  them 
a  little  dazed  as  to  the  exactness  of  their  equivalence 
to  Boccaccio  and  Keats,  has  a  similar  effect  in  plastic 
art,  where,  as  in  the  matter  of  prose  and  poetry,  it 
merely  formulates  the  feeling  of  the  entire  public 
which  occupies  itself  with  such  subjects.  The 
American  attitude  in  the  presence  of  novelty  of  any 
kind  has  been  described  as  speculation  as  to  "how 


THE  ART  INSTINCT  269 

to  make  something  just  as  good  for  less  money." 
In  art,  at  all  events,  this  accurately  characterizes  the 
demand  of  the  pubUc  upon  the  artist,  who  is  there- 
fore stimulated  to  "  supply  long  felt  wants  "  rather 
than  permitted  to  produce  naturally.  Of  an  artist 
of  great  taste  and  refined  appreciation,  for  instance, 
we  excuse,  if  we  do  not  exact,  parodies  of  the  gran- 
diose effects  of  Rome  and  of  the  large  picturesque- 
ness  of  Flanders.  Of  a  painter  born  and  trained 
evidently  for  high  class  periodical  illustration,  we 
greet  with  effusion  naif  experimentation  in  the 
sphere  of  Christs,  Venuses,  Last  Suppers,  the  acme 
of  classic  subject.  Of  a  sculptor  who  has  a  decora- 
tive sense,  we  persist  in  calling  for  the  heroic  and 
statuesque.  And  while  we  thus  pervert  mere  in- 
stinct and  talent,  we  afford  little  scope  to  the  free 
and  natural  exercise  of  its  energy  by  the  conspicu- 
ous genius  we  may  legitimately  boast  If  in  the  in- 
formal organization  some  semblance  of  which  in 
every  civilized  country  all  professions  tend  inevi- 
tably to  acquire,  our  artists  did  not  resemble  less  an 
army  than  a  mob  ;  if  in  the  exercise  of  their  func- 
tions normal  conditions  were  not  so  sourly  distui-bed 
that  "  time  is  lost  and  no  proportion  kept ; "  does 
anyone  suppose  that  Mr.  EidUtz  would  build  an 
ecclesiastical  savings-bank,  Mr.  La  Farge  set  a 
Theocritan  idyl  in  a  church  casement,  or  IVIr.  Eakins 
choose  the  Crucifixion  for  his  masterpiece  ? 

Of  course,  in  all   these   respects  artistic  France 
presents   the  completest  possible   contrast  to  our- 


270  FRENCH   TKAITS 

selves.  The  French  art  public  does  not  demand 
mediaeval  cathedrals  and  Titians,  early  Renaissance 
low  relief  and  pre-Raphaelite  intensity,  the  Floi-en- 
tine  line  and  the  Venetian  palette.  It  demands  in- 
stead M.  G6r6me.  M.  GerOme  is  by  no  means  a 
favorite  of  mine.  His  work,  largely  considered, 
lacks  just  that  element  of  reality  which  apparently 
its  author  and  his  pubUc  conceive  to  be  its  raison 
d'etre.  But  the  evolution  of  such  a  painter  and  his 
popularity  witness  strikingly  the  culture  of  the  en- 
vironment, where  all  serious  effort  is  soberly  and 
sanely  made,  where  every  artist  seems  occupied  with 
what  he  was  born  to  do,  and  where  that  crying  dis- 
proportion between  ambition  and  accompUshment 
characteristic  of  the  amateur  stage  of  progress  is  re- 
duced to  a  minimum.  M.  Gerome's  work  is  in  this 
sense  admirably  professional,  and  the  almost  uni- 
versal honor  in  which  it  is  held  is  admirable  recogni- 
tion of  this  aspect  of  it — its  excellence,  that  is  to  say, 
in  form,  in  restraint,  in  a  certain  felicity  of  style, 
often,  which  raises  it  far  above  almost  any  contem- 
porary work  of  the  kind,  and  occasionally  (as  in  the 
"  Ave,  Caesar  !  Morituri  te  salutant ")  achieves  for  it 
a  dramatic  distinction  bordering  on  grandeur.  Com- 
pare it  for  these  qualities  with  any  work  produced 
among  us  by  fellow-craftsmen  who  find  Gerome 
terribly  deficient  in  charm,  who  have  the  true  in- 
terests of  art  so  much  at  heart  as  to  fear  compromis- 
ing them  should  they  admit  the  value  of  education, 
even  in  the  absence  of  aflSatua     And  observe   the 


THE    AIIT   INSTINCT  271 

prodigious  difference  between  the  milieu  whose 
admiration  fosters  these  qualities  and  our  own,  which 
expiates  its  ignorance  of  their  importance  by  attach- 
ing itself  to  the  experimental  and  the  ephemeral, 
and  which  by  its  ingenuous  exaction  of  stimulating 
and  contempt  for  sustaining  viands  is  condemned 
oftenest  to  a  Barmecide  banquet  in  the  halls  of  art. 

Compare,  on  the  other  hand,  such  a  work  as  the 
"  Ave,  Caesar !  "  with  the  historical  painting  of  Piloty, 
or  Wagner,  or  Kaulbach,  or  even  Hans  Makart. 
How  wide  is  the  interval  by  which  it  escapes  their 
touch  of  commonness — that  element  which  in  art  as 
in  life  we  know  best  as  the  exact  opposite  of  distinc- 
tion, the  Gemeinheit  which  Goethe  was  always  repre- 
hending, and  before  which  Heine  fled  into  exile. 
Gerome,  Meissonier,  Boulanger,  Baudry,  Laurens, 
Dubufe,  Henner,  Detaille,  Mercie,  Dubois,  Lefebvre, 
Barrias,  Luminals,  Cabanel,  Bouguereau,  Chaplin, 
and  a  score  of  others  placed  in  the  front  rank  by  their 
compatriots'  esteem,  testify,  in  a  word,  to  the  success 
of  the  national  sense  for  form  in  developing  the  fine 
qualities  of  distinction  and  elegance,  as  well  as  the 
solid  ones  of  special  competence  and  general  culture. 
Distinction  is  a  trait  as  proper  to  prose  as  to  poetry. 
It  is  perhaps  even  more  necessary  to  prose,  and 
hence  apt  to  be  therein  more  generally  developed. 
It  is  at  any  rate  a  native  and  penetrating  quality, 
which  shows  itself  in  every  effort  of  the  artist  who 
possesses  it.  It  implies  that  his  point  of  view  is 
always  special  and  fastidious,  that  he  does  not  look 


272  FRENCH  TRAITS 

at  things  in  a  preoccupied  and  matter-of-course  waj, 
permitting  their  grosser  traits  to  impress  him,  and 
inertly  accepting  the  actual  impression  on  the  retina 
as  equalling  the  artistic  suggestion  of  the  object. 
Such  a  painter  as  M.  Alfred  Stevens,  for  example, 
and  such  a  sculptor  as  M.  Moreau-Vautier,  evince  in 
the  highest  degree  the  French  feeling  for  distinction, 
for  what  is  fastidious  in  its  correctness,  for  refine- 
ment, polish,  artistic  decorum.  The  patrician  ele- 
ment is  as  characteristic  in  plastic  art  as  in  character 
or  manners,  and  the  French  have  an  instinctive 
affinity  for  it  M.  Moreau-Vautier  stoops  to  trifles 
and  M.  Stevens  sometimes  suffers  his  art  to  exhale 
in  mere  millinery  ;  but  in  each  instance,  and  in  a 
host  of  others  of  which  these  are  simply  typical, 
there  is  a  highbred,  cultivated  dignity  which  confers 
on  the  most  frivolous  work  a  certain  amount  of  un- 
mistakable distinction. 

We  come  finally,  thus,  to  recognize  elegance  as 
the  characteristic  quahty  of  French  art  in  its  wid- 
est scope,  and  to  perceive  that  the  divinity  which 
presides  over  every  aesthetic  shrine  is  Taste.  In 
everj'thing  plastic,  taste  is  universally  the  French 
test  of  excellence.  Offences  against  taste  are  the 
sins  most  shocking  to  the  French  sense  ;  obedi- 
ence to  its  dictates  is  the  attitude  most  cordially 
approved  by  the  French  mind.  One  can  see  how 
distinctly  national  the  trait  is  by  observing,  not 
merely  how  quickly  elegance  became  the  dominant 
note  in  all  artistic  importation  at  the  Kenaissanco 


THE   ART   INSTINCT  273 

epoch — how  even  Primaticcio  at  Fontainebleau,  for 
example,  shows  the  effect  of  the  new  environment 
upon  the  Itahan  inspiration — but  also  how  it  strug- 
gles with  the  grandiose  severity  of  Gothic  at  Rouen 
and  Beauvais  ;  as  indeed,  centuries  before,  the  in- 
stinctive feeling  for  it  developed  Gothic  line  and 
movement  out  of  the  sombre  massiveness  of  Roman- 
esque. The  quality  is  as  noticeable  in  every  de- 
partment of  effort  as  in  formal  art.  From  landscape 
gardening  to  needlework,  from  bookbindings  to 
placards,  from  the  carefully-considered  proportions 
of  a  Neo-grec  palace  to  the  mouldings  on  a  block 
of  builder's  buildings,  from  the  decoration  of  a 
theatre  to  the  arrangement  of  a  kitchen-garden, 
in  dress,  in  amusements,  in  household  furnish- 
ings, in  carriages,  chandeliers,  clocks,  mirrors,  table 
services — in  fine,  in  every  object  produced  by  the 
hand  of  man — is  visible  the  working  of  the  art  in- 
stinct under  the  direction  of  taste  to  the  end  of 
elegance.  In  Paris  every  vista  is  an  artistic  spec- 
tacle. From  the  point  of  view  of  art  nothing  in  the 
world  equals  the  picture  one  sees  in  looking  toward 
the  Louvre  from  the  Arc  de  I'fitoile — unless  it  be 
the  hne  of  the  boulevards,  where  the  buildings,  the 
terraces,  the  shop-windows,  the  people  combine  in 
the  production  of  a  scene  from  which  every  nat- 
ural element  except  the  sky  above  it  has  been  elimi- 
nated, and  which  would  therefore  be  dazing  and  de- 
pressing if  its  harmony,  its  taste,  its  elegance  did 
not  render  it  beyond  all  expression  stimulating  and 
18 


274  FRENCH  TRAITS 

delightful.  The  entire  city  is  a  composition,  the 
principle  of  fitness  in  whose  lines  and  masses,  tones, 
and  local  tints  secvires  elegance  in  the  ensemble. 
Elegance  is  embodied  by  Pacis  as  perfectly  as,  ac- 
cording to  Victor  Hugo,  majesty  is  by  Rome,  beauty 
by  Venice,  grace  by  Naples,  and  wealth  by  London. 
Naturally  the  rule  of  taste  results  in  the  tyranny 
of  the  mode.  Nowhere,  perhaps,  is  fashion  so 
exacting,  not  only  in  dress  and  demeanor,  but  in 
plastic  art  itself.  Hence  the  development  of  schools, 
the  erection  of  methods  into  systems,  the  succes- 
sion of  romanticists  to  classicists  and  of  realists  to 
both, the  sequence  of  academic,  pre-Raphaelite,  plein 
air,  impressionist  notions.  So  that  if  the  mass  of 
French  art  is  too  conventional,  too  little  spiritual, 
too  far  separated  from  nature,  too  material  in  a 
word,  to  be  constantly  renewed  by  fresh  impulses 
operating  in  the  work  of  original  geniuses  contin- 
ually springing  up,  it  nevertheless  always  makes  the 
most  of  a  novel  view,  a  fresh  position  by  developing, 
systematizing,  and  finally  imposing  it  as  the  mode. 
And  however  extraordinary  the  germ  of  the  mode, 
so  severe  is  French  taste  and  so  acute  is  the  French 
sense  for  harmony,  that  in  its  full  flower  any  fash- 
ion is  sure  to  be  distinguished  more  by  unity  and 
measure  than  by  caprice.  Women's  bonnets  and 
dress,  and  certain  accompanying  accoutrements,  for 
example,  of  a  most  bizarre  character  in  themselves, 
are  wholly  transmuted  in  the  laboratory  of  the 
French  modiste  and  couturiere.     In  this  way  the  in- 


THE  ART   INSTINCT  275 

ventions  of  Engliah  eccentricity  actually  acquire, 
when  transplanted  to  France,  the  quality  of  elegance 
in  which  they  are  most  conspicuously  lacking,  and 
French  taste  and  constructive  art  have  done  for  the 
ulster  and  the  Gainsborough  hat  what  the  Fontaine- 
bleau  landscape  school  did  for  the  germ  transmitted 
to  it  by  Constable.  Taste,  too,  is  endued  with  that 
sanative  property  which  purges  French  art  of  the 
dross  of  positively  ridiculous  and  extravagant  fash- 
ions. A  fashion  is  not  in  France  the  mere  "  fad  "  it  is 
in  England  and  with  us.  The  mode  is  tyrannical,  but 
it  is  intelligent  as  well.  There  was  a  method  and  a 
measure  in  the  costume  of  the  Incroyables  of  the 
Eevolution  and  the  Greek  and  Roman  fantasies  of 
the  Empire,  which  give  them  dignity  in  retrospect 
and  must  have  saved  them  from  that  contemporary 
ridicule  of  which  every  Frenchman  stands  in  terror. 
Good  or  bad,  they  were  styles.  They  were  not  the 
ridiculous  results  of  personal  feeling,  of  whim  and 
freak,  intruding  themselves  in  Maudle  and  Postle- 
thwaite  fashion  into  a  realm  where  reason  and  con- 
vention legitimately  reign. 

Taste,  moreover,  is  universal  in  France.  It  per- 
vades all  ranks.  It  dictates  the  blouse  of  the  ouvrier, 
the  blue  and  white  composure  of  the  blanchisseuse, 
the  furnishing  of  a  concierge's  lodge  as  explicitly  as 
it  does  the  apparel  of  the  elegante  or  the  etiquette 
of  a  salon.  It  banishes  everywhere  raggedness,  dirt, 
slovenHness,  disorder.  Having  classified  people,  so 
far  as  possible  it  uniforms  them ;  and  by  uniform- 


276  FRENCH   TRAITS 

ing  the  classes  it  unifies  the  whole  which  the  classes 
compose.  Thus  everyone  is  a  critic,  everyone  instinct- 
ively feels,  as  to  any  specific  thing,  whether  or  no 
it  comes  up  to  the  general  standard.  The  first-comer 
is  a  judge  of  art,  as  in  Italy  he  is  of  beauty.  Every- 
one's instinct  is  trained  under  the  influence  of  taste 
aU  the  time  ;  whichever  way  one  turns  he  receives 
some  imperceptible  education.  Nature,  wilfulness, 
untrammelled  self-expression,  and  spontaneity  are 
lacking.  An  English  friend  of  mine  complained  in 
disgust  of  the  placidity  and  tenue  of  the  immense 
crowd  at  Gambetta's  funeral,  and  of  its  blue,  white, 
gray,  and  black  monotone  of  color.  An  Italian 
prince  or  pauper,  raffine  or  rustic,  throws  the  con- 
centrated charm  of  an  absolute  unconsciousness  in- 
to a  look,  a  gesture,  an  attitude,  which  the  happiest 
art  can  never  hope  to  rivaL  Perhaps  we  may  main- 
tain that  there  is  a  subtile  order  and  harmony  in  the 
fortuitous,  the  accidental,  which  escapes  the  ordi- 
nary eye,  and  which  the  ordinary  artist  does  not 
catch.  But  whereas  this  kind  of  harmony  is  some- 
what insubstantial,  and  one's  feeling  for  it  specu- 
lative and  fanciful,  France  presents  the  stimulating 
spectacle  of  an  entire  people  convinced  with  S^nan- 
cour  that  the  tendency  to  order  should  form  "  an 
essential  part  of  our  inclinations,  of  our  instinct, 
like  the  tendency  to  self-preservation  and  to  re- 
production," and  illustrating  its  conviction  con- 
sciously and  unremittently  in  every  sphere  of  life 
and  art — making  indeed  an  art  of  life  itselt 


THE  ART  INSTINCT  277 

With  this  feeling  impregnating  the  moral  atmos- 
phere, with  the  architectonic  spirit  informing  all 
activities,  the  trifling  as  well  as  the  serious,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  Paris  is  the  world's  art  clearing-house 
whither  every  one  goes  to  perfect,  or  at  least  to 
"  consecrate  "  his  talent,  and  the  centre  of  artistic 
production  whence  art  objects  as  well  as  art  ideas 
are  disseminated  throughout  civilization.  Nor  is  it 
surprising  that  even  in  music — for  which  the  French 
have  certainly  no  special  gift,  owing  to  their  lack  of 
sentiment,  to  the  absence  of  rhythm  and  the  predom- 
inance of  the  saccade  note  in  the  French  language  and 
character — Paris  should  have  reached  its  indisput- 
able eminence.  "What  is  curious,  however,  an  i  what 
constitutes  a  singular  criticism  of  our  century  as  the 
*'  heir  of  all  the  ages,"  is  that  the  least  poetic  should 
be  the  most  artistic  of  modem  peoples  ;  that  France, 
in  fact,  which  "  in  art  cares  more  for  the  true  than 
even  for  the  beautiful,"  should  be  the  only  country 
comparable  with  the  Italy  of  the  Renaissance  and 
the  Greece  of  antiquity,  not  only  for  the  prodigious 
amount,  but  for  the  general  excellence  of  her  artis- 
tic activity. 


VIII 
THE  PROVINCIAL  SPIRIT 


THE  PKOVINCIAL  SPIRIT 

As  the  French  social  instinct  culminates  in  the 
French  religion  of  patriotism,  French  individual 
vanity  becomes  conceit  whenever  the  Frenchman 
contemplates  France  or  the  foreigner.  The  egotism 
which  he  personally  lacks  is  conspicuously  charac- 
teristic of  himself  and  his  fellows  considered  as  a 
nation.  Nationally  considered,  the  people  com- 
posed of  the  most  cosmopolitan  and  conformable 
individuals  in  the  world  distinctly  displays  the  pro- 
vincial spirit.  Other  peoples  have  their  doubts, 
their  misgivings.  They  take  refuge  in  vagueness, 
in  emotional  exaggeration,  in  commonplaces,  in  pure 
brag.  We  have,  ourselves,  a  certain  invincibility  of 
expectation  that  transfigures  our  present  and  recon- 
ciles us  to  our  lack  of  a  past.  Or,  when  we  are  con- 
fronted with  evidence  of  specific  inferiority,  we  ad- 
duce counterbalancing  considerations,  of  which  it 
need  not  be  said  we  enjoy  a  greater  abundance  even 
than  most  of  us  are  prepared  on  the  instant  to  recall 
— "  comfort  and  oysters  "  were  all  a  certain  compa- 
triot could  think  of  in  one  emergency,  according  to 
a  recent  anecdote.  But  France  is  to  the  mind, 
rather  than    exclusively  to    the  feeling,  of  every 


282  FRENCH   TRAITS 

Frenchman,  as  distinctly  la  grande  nation  to-day  as 
she  was  in  the  reign  of  le  grand  monarqzie,  when 
she  had  fewer  rivals.  The  rise  of  these  has  made 
little  impression  on  her.  M.  Victor  Duruy  begins 
his  history  by  citing  from  "  some  great  foreign 
poet,"  of  whose  name  he  is  characteristically  igno- 
rant, the  statement  that  France  is  "  the  Soldier  of 
God."  Every  Frenchman  echoes  the  words  of 
Stendhal,  who,  nevertheless,  in  general  strikingly 
illustrates  what  Mr.  Spencer  calls  the  "  bias  of  anti- 
patriotism  : "  "  We,  the  greatest  people  that  has 
ever  existed — yes,  even  after  1815  !  "  The  "  mis- 
sion "  of  France  is  in  every  Frenchman's  mind. 
Her  many  Cassandras  spring  from  the  universal 
consciousness  of  it,  and  are,  besides,  more  articulate 
than  convinced.  Antiquity  itself,  to  which  it  is  a 
tendency  of  much  modern  cultm*e  to  revert  for 
many  of  its  ideals,  seems  in  a  way  rudimentary  to 
the  French,  who,  even  during  the  First  Empire, 
deemed  themselves  engaged  in  developing  rather 
than  copying,  classic  models,  from  administration 
to  attire.  More  than  any  other  people  with  whom 
comparison  could  fitly  be  made,  they  seem  ignorant 
of  what  is  thought  and  done  outside  the  borders  of 
their  own  territory.  It  is  probable  that  not  only 
the  Germans,  a  large  class  of  whom  know  every- 
thing and  whose  rapacity  of  acquisition  nothing  es- 
capes, and  the  English  and  ourselves,  who  are  great 
travellers,  but  persons  of  almost  any  nationality  to 
be  encountered  anywhere  abroad,  are  far  more  fa- 


THE  PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  283 

miliar  with  French  books,  French  history,  French 
topography,  French  ways,  than  the  average  intelli- 
gent Frenchman  is  with  those  of  any  country  but 
his  own. 

The  French  travel  less  than  any  other  people. 
Less  than  any  people  do  they  savor  what  is  dis- 
tinctly national  abroad.  Not  only  do  they  emigrate 
less ;  France  is  so  agreeable  to  Frenchmen,  and  to 
Frenchmen  of  every  station,  that  it  is  small  wonder 
they  are  such  pilgrims  and  strangers  abroad,  and 
tarry  there  so  short  a  time  unless  necessity  compel 
them.  But,  as  one  travels  to  become  civilized,  and 
as  in  French  eyes  civilization  reaches  perfection 
only  in  France,  the  chief  motive  for  travel  is  lacking 
to  them.  "We  need  to  study,  not  to  travel  A 
travelled  Frenchman  is  no  more  civilized  than  his 
stay-at-home  compatriots — which  is  not  the  case 
elsewhere.  Besides,  nowadays,  you  know,  we  have 
photographs  " — naivete  like  this  it  is  not  uncommon 
to  hear  in  Paris.  "Le  Temps,"  probably  on  the 
whole  the  best  journal  in  the  world,  rarely  has  oc- 
casion to  refer  to  the  United  States  without  falling 
into  some  error  of  fact,  such  as  its  American  an- 
alogue would  be  incapable  of  making  in  regard  to 
France,  though  the  latter  shows  considerably  less 
sympathetic  disposition  to  appreciate  French  cur- 
rents of  feeling  and  thought  than  "  Le  Temps  "  does 
in  the  converse  case.  Every  American  traveller  has 
encountered  the  Frenchman  who  believed  that  the 
Civil  War  was  a  contest  between  North  and  South 


284  FRENCH  TRAITS 

America,  and  has  been  astonished  by  his  general  in- 
telligence, which  is  wholly  superior  to  that  of  our 
people  of  an  analogous  ignorance.  The  entire 
French  attitude  toward  foreigners  strikes  us  as  cu- 
riously conscious  and  sensitive.  In  Paris,  certainly, 
the  foreigner,  hospitably  as  he  is  invariably  treated, 
is  invariably  treated  as  the  foreigner  that  he  is. 
His  observations  about  French  poUtics,  manners, 
art,  are  received  with  what  sUght  impatience  civility 
permits  ;  and  often,  indeed,  they  are  of  an  exasper- 
ating absurdity.  He  is  made  to  perceive  that  all 
these  things  are  distinctly  matters  of  French  con- 
cern. The  Frenchman  feels  too  acutely  the  privi- 
lege of  being  a  Frenchman  to  extend  the  favor,  even 
by  courtesy,  to  the  stranger  within  his  gates.  He 
has  laws  which  authoiize  him  to  expel  from  French 
territory  foreigners  who  displease  him.  When 
the  little  American  daily,  "The  Morning  News," 
treated  the  Parisians  to  some  American  "  journahs- 
tic  enterprise"  about  the  healthfulness  of  Nice, 
some  years  ago,  there  was  an  amusing  outcry  for 
its  immediate  exile  as  a  foreign  publication.  When 
the  late  King  Alfonso  passed  through  Paris  after 
accepting  in  Germany  a  colonelcy  of  Uhlans,  Presi- 
dent Grevy  was  obliged  to  apologize  for  the  conduct 
of  the  Paris  mob,  which  hissed  and  hooted  him  as 
if  there  were  no  such  thing  as  French  civility, 
which,  nevertheless,  is  proof  against  everything  but 
chauvinism.  Accurately  estimated  as  Wagner  is  by 
the  leading  French  musicians,  and  avid  as  are  the 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  285 

Parisians  of  whatever  is  new  in  art,  Paris  is  so 
distinctly  an  entity  and  as  such  takes  itself  so  se- 
riously, that  it  would  not  listen  to  "Lohengrin" 
because  the  author  of  "  Lohengrin "  had,  nearly 
twenty  years  before,  insulted  it  after  a  manner 
which,  one  would  say,  Paris  would  be  glad  to  con- 
done as  natural  to  German  grossierte,  and  therefore 
as  unworthy  of  remembrance.  The  artists  of  the 
Salon  lose  a  similar  opportunity  of  showing  them- 
selves superior  to  provincialism  of  a  particularly 
gross  kind,  in  visiting  the  aesthetic  primitiveness  of 
our  Congressmen  on  the  individual  American  paint- 
er, who  is  already  only  too  impotently  ashamed  of 
it. 

The  provincial  spirit  born  of  an  exaggerated  sense 
of  nationality  has  nowhere  else  proved  so  fatal  to 
France,  perhaps,  as  in  closing  her  perceptions  to 
one  of  the  very  greatest  forces  of  the  century.  The 
modern  spirit  is  illustrated  in  many  ways  more  sig- 
nally and  splendidly  by  the  French  than  by  any 
other  people,  but  they  have  notably  missed  its  in- 
dustrial side.  Industriahsm  may  almost  be  said  to 
play  the  chief  part  in  the  modern  world,  to  be  one 
of  those  influences  which  contribute  the  most  to  na- 
tional grandeur  and  individual  importance.  Beside 
its  triumphs,  those  of  the  military  spirit  are  surely 
beginning  to  seem  fleeting  and  ineffective.  Stand- 
ing armies  were  never  so  colossal  and  never  cost  so 
much,  but,  despite  the  fact  that  no  one  can  foresee 
the  manner  of  their  decline,  it  is  already  plain  that 


286  FRENCH  TRAITS 

the  system  which  they  support  must  ally  itself  with 
industrialism,  or  perish  before  it ;  which  is  only  an 
extended  way  of  putting  Napoleon's  remark  that 
"  an  army  travels  on  its  belly. "  Democracy  may 
have  as  much  use  for  force  as  feudalism  had,  but  it 
is  only  the  more  clear  for  this  that  the  heaviest  bat- 
talions are  to  be  on  the  side  of  the  particular  democ- 
racy which  best  apprehends  and  applies  the  princi- 
ples of  peaceful  industry  in  their  widest  scope  and 
exactest  precision.  K  there  be  anything  in  these 
inconsistent  with  eminence  in  literature,  art,  natural 
science,  diplomacy,  philosophy,  with  the  ideal,  in 
short,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  ideal.  It  is  the 
fittest  to  survive  that  does  survive.  But  it  is  far  more 
probable  that  what  is  generally  called  materialism  ia 
often  only  so  called  because  the  science  of  it  has  not 
yet  been  discovered.  The  future  will  certainly  ac- 
count nationality  a  puissant  and  beneficent  force 
measurably  in  proportion  as  the  nationality  of  the 
future  imbues  itself  with  the  spirit  of  industriaHsm, 
which  at  the  present  time  appears,  superficially  at 
least,  so  unnational,  so  cosmopolitan.  Witness  al- 
ready not  only  the  wealth  of  Anglo-Saxondom,  but 
the  way  in  which  this  wealth  serves  to  promulgate 
the  Anglo  Saxon  ideals,  imperfect  as  these  are. 

Now,  at  a  time  when  the  foundations  of  modern 
society  were  being  laid,  France  was  neglecting  the 
practice,  if  not  the  philosophy,  of  industrialism. 
Only  in  a  philosophical  and  speculative  way — and, 
indeed,  one  may  add  an  amatevu*  way — did  she  con* 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  287 

cern  herself  with  it.  She  was  wholly  given  over  to 
the  things  of  the  mind,  of  the  heart,  of  the  soul,  ex- 
amining the  sanctions  of  every  creed,  every  concep- 
tion, every  virtue  even,  and  so  preoccupied  with  en- 
cyclopeedism  that  she  forgot  colonization  entirely. 
She  threw  away  Canada,  which  she  had  administered 
with  a  sagacity  wholly  surpassing  that  of  the  Eng- 
lish administration  of  the  then  loyal  America.  She 
allowed  herself  to  be  driven  from  India.  She  made 
only  a  desultory  effort  to  develop  her  possessions  in 
South  America.  While  Turgot  was  studying  his  re- 
forms, writing  political  economy,  discovering  that 
needless  wages  were  in  reality  but  alms,  meditating 
and  administering  with  a  brilliance  and  power  that 
place  him  at  the  very  head  of  French  statesmanship, 
the  English  Turgot  was  plundering  India.  While 
the  French  were  pondering  and  discussing  the  Con- 
trat  Social,  the  English  were  putting  money  in  their 
purse,  with  which  to  fight  the  Napoleonic  wars  and 
restore  the  ancient  regime  at  the  Congress  of 
Vienna.  By  force  of  intelligence,  of  impatience 
with  sophisms,  of  passion  for  pure  reason,  by  detes- 
tation of  privilege  and  love  for  humanity,  feudality 
in  France  was  being  undermined  ;  while  by  force  of 
energy,  of  strenuous,  steadfast,  and  heroic  determi- 
nation, Hastings  was  enabling  England,  by  condon- 
ing infamy,  to  substitute  wealth  for  institutional  re- 
form. 

The  result  is  very  visible  at  the  present  day,  and 
complicates  the  French  outlook  not  a  little.    French 


288  FRENCH   TRAITS 

credit  is  still  high,  but  French  finances  give  the 
wisest  French  economists  melancholy  forebodings. 
France's  commerce  and  manufactures  are  very  con- 
siderable, but,  unlike  her  agriculture,  they  are  so  in 
spite  of,  rather  than  because  of,  French  institutions. 
The  settlement  of  the  land  question  followed  natur- 
ally upon  the  adoption  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  whereas 
the  Revolution  left  the  questions  of  trade  and  finance 
untouched  in  their  provincial  seventeenth-century 
status.  Immigration  and  geographical  situation  go 
far  to  atone  for  the  un-American  stupidity  of  our 
tariff^  but  the  same  provincial  spirit  works  much 
greater  provincial  results  in  France,  where  no  good 
luck  in  the  industrial  field  counterbalances  the  efifects 
of  subsidies  and  protection.  The  nation  is  at  once 
the  most  industrious  and  the  least  industrial  of  the 
great  nations.  Notable  exceptions  there  are  ;  but 
not  only  do  these  thrive  at  the  expense  of  the  mass, 
but,  these  included,  the  business  of  the  nation 
seems,  by  comparison  with  that  of  England  and  our- 
selves, exaggeratedly  retail,  where  indeed  traces  of 
its  activity  are  not  altogether  lacking.  An  English- 
man notes  at  once  the  tremendous  depleting  cost  of 
consuming  only  native  manufactures.  An  American 
remarks  a  surprising  absence  of  business  of  all  kinds, 
except  in  the  luxuries  and  decorations  of  Ufe.  The 
smalluess  of  the  scale,  the  universal  two  prices  for 
everything,  the  restriction  of  speculation  to  a  small 
army  of  professed  speculators,  the  way  in  which  the 
trade  in  articles  de  Paris  and  nouveautes  dominates 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  289 

in  importance  that  in  grain,  cotton,  groceries,  and 
provisions,  the  outnumbering  of  drays  and  trucks 
by  handcarts  and  cabs,  the  immense  preponderance 
of  Uttle  shops  over  what  we  are  really  etymological 
in  calling  "stores" — these  things  seem  provincial 
not  to  our  philistinism  so  much  as  to  our  ideality. 

It  is  very  well  to  be  at  the  head  of  civilization,  to 
represent  most  perfectly  of  all  nations  "  the  human- 
ization  of  man  in  society,"  but  you  must  manage  to 
live,  to  endure  ;  and  to  endure  you  must  take  note 
of  the  forces  at  work  around  you,  you  must  see  the 
way  the  world  is  going.  You  must  not  at  the  pres- 
ent day  be  so  exclusively  devoted  to  Geist,  however 
justifiably  Mr.  Arnold  might  sing  its  praises  to  his 
own  countrymen,  as  to  let  your  commercial  instincts 
atrophy.  Such  costly  fiascos  as  the  Touquin  expe- 
dition are  the  price  paid  by  France  for  that  uncom- 
mercial character  betrayed  in  the  use  of  the  term 
"  article  d'export  "  for  whatever  is  cheap  and  poor. 
At  a  time  when  every  European  nation  is  colonizing 
in  search  of  markets,  success  is  not  to  be  won  by 
exporting  brummagem.  Curiously  enough,  even  in 
the  domain  of  art,  where  the  French  are,  one  would 
say,  thoroughly  commercial  (as  well  as,  of  course,  ad- 
mirable executants),  a  critic  in  "L'Art"  rebukes  the 
provincial  French  disregard  of  foreign  art,  by  beg- 
ging his  countrymen  to  be  at  least  lenient  enough 
to  examine  before  disapproving,  and  asking  them 
h6w  they  would  like  to  be  judged  solely  on  the  art 
products  they  themselves  send  abroad.  The  French 
19 


290  FRENCH   TRAITS 

belief  that  foreigners  can  be  made  to  buy  an  article 
in  art  or  industry  that  Frenchmen  would  reject  is, 
indeed,  directly  associated  with  their  conviction  that 
in  all  activities  you  can  only  be  amusing  to  them, 
never  instructive.  Although  they  welcome  the  mere 
strangeness  which  other  peoples  resent  and  which 
they  find  curious  and  intellectually  interesting,  prac- 
tically they  find  no  more  utihty  in  exchanging  ideas 
than  dry  goods  with  you.  And  not  only  do  they  lose 
in  national  consideration  in  this  way,  but,  to  note  a 
by  no  means  unimportant  detail,  they  miss  the  de- 
velopment of  character  that  a  national  genius  for  in- 
dustrialism in  its  large  aspects  stimulates  in  individ- 
ual citizens.  The  amassing  of  money  is  apt  to  make 
misers  of  Frenchmen.  There  is  little  amassing  on  a 
large  scale  that  is  not  known  and  described  as  ava- 
rice. There  are  no  Vanderbilts.  Their  laws  secur- 
ing the  distribution  of  wealth  stimulate  sordidness 
instead  of  speculation.  For  speculation  the  mass 
of  the  people  substitute  the  lottery,  which  is  cer- 
tainly a  provincial  form  of  business  risk.  Holders 
of  successful  tickets  almost  never  dissipate  their 
winnings,  but  employ  them  sensibly  and  econom- 
ically. Petty  gambling  is  nearly  universal,  but  its 
scale  is  usually  parochial.  The  gambling  at  the 
Paris  Bourse  is,  of  course,  colossal  in  amount,  but 
in  its  area  of  influence  it  is  restricted.  There  are 
comparatively  few  "  lambs  shorn  "  there,  and  the 
temptation  to  take  a  "  flyer  "  in  the  market  does  not 
assail  the  average  citizen. 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  291 

Moreover,  the  necessity  for  an  immense  army 
keeps  the  military  spirit  in  fashion.  Every  citizen 
passes  through  the  caserne,  find  retains  something  of 
its  feeling.  Duels,  fine  uniforms,  contempt  of  civil- 
ians, superciliousness  toward  "  trades-people  "  sur- 
vive from  the  middle-age  predominance  of  the  no- 
blesse, through  this  necessity,  with  a  persistence  that 
strikes  our  industrialized  sense  as  puerile.  Demo- 
cratic as  France  is,  she  is  stUl  as  feudal,  as  provincial 
in  these  respects,  as  oligarchical  or  despotic  societies 
are  in  others.  Material  as  the  community  is  in  many 
ways,  in  these  it  is  still  steeped  in  the  antiquated 
ideal  of  that  age  of  chivalry  whose  very  existence 
we  have  arrived  at  doubting.  The  truculence  of 
Richelieu's  time  has  been  softened,  but  a  states- 
man is  still  at  the  mercy  of  a  spadassin,  if  the  lat- 
ter conceives  his  "  honor  "  wounded  in  the  course 
of  parliamentary  polemics.  The  sentiment  which 
sustains  the  soldier  against  the  avocat  is  wide- 
spread, and  does  not  dififer  greatly,  except  in  refine- 
ment, from  the  similar  provincialism  of  our  Southern 
fire-eaters. 

French  provincialism,  however,  is  exhibited  rather 
in  a  restricted  field  of  knowledge  than  in  a  narrow 
attitude  of  mind.  It  proceeds  from  ignorance  rath- 
er than  prejudice.  Unlike  the  provincialism  of  any 
other  people,  it  is  thoroughly  open-minded.  It  is 
traditional  rather  than  perverse.  It  is  not  arrogant 
but  limited — not  so  much  sceptical  of  foreign  merit 
as  conscious  of  its  own.     Its  development  has  taken 


292  FRENCH   TRAITS 

place  amid  competitive,  rather  than  isolated,  con- 
ditions, and  it  shows  the  mark  of  the  continental 
struggle  instead  of  insular  evolution  ;  its  conceit  is 
derived  from  a  too  exclusive  contemplation  of  French 
accomplishments,  not  from  that  vague  and  senti- 
mental exaggeration  with  which  unchecked  emotion 
accentuates  self-respect.  Its  view  of  the  universe  is 
conspicuously  incomplete,  but  so  far  as  it  goes  its 
vision  is  admirably  undistorted.  In  a  word,  even 
French  provincialism  is  remarkably  candid  and  ra- 
tional. It  seems  for  this  reason  particularly  crasa 
to  us,  because  its  exhibition  is  marked  by  so  much 
sense  and  so  little  sentiment,  because  a  lack  of  emo- 
tional delicacy  leads  to  bald  and,  so  to  speak,  scien- 
tific statement  of  French  merits  and  attainmenta 
We  could  sympathize  much  more  readily  with  pure 
brag.  The  absence  of  buncombe  is  distinctly  dis- 
agreeable to  us.  The  palpable  sincerity  of  its  air 
of  placid  exactitude  we  find  difficult  to  support 
We  could  forgive  it  anything  more  readily  than  its 
frank  composure.  The  story  of  the  London  cock- 
ney who  found  the  French  a  singular  people  because 
they  called  "bread "pain,  and  replied  to  a  comrade, 
who  observed  that  calling  pain  "  bread  "  was  just  as 
singular,  "  Oh,  well,  you  know  it  is  bread,"  illus- 
trates rather  the  French  than  the  Anglo-Saxon  order 
of  provincialism.  The  Englishman  would  be  pre- 
occupied with  the  contemptible  character  of  the 
bread  itself.  The  reason  why  the  Germans  are  such 
good  linguists,  says  the  French  Calino,  is  because 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  293 

"  they  already  know  one  foreign  language."  His 
English  correlative  esteems  foreign  languages  "  lin- 
go." A  young  and  observant  Methodist  clergyman 
whom  I  once  saw  in  Rome,  whither  he  had  been 
sent  by  his  Connecticut  congregation  in  search  of 
health  and  recreation,  was  evidently  getting  none 
of  either  because,  in  the  presence  of  Raphael  and 
Michael  Angelo,  he  was  perpetually  and  painfully 
reminding  himself,  as  well  as  others,  that  "  a  fine 
action  is  finer  than  a  fine  picture,"  and  that  the 
ItaHans  were  so  contemptible  a  people  as  to  make  it 
natural  to  infer  from  their  distinction  in  them  some- 
thing particularly  debasing  in  the  influence  of  the 
fine  arts.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  a  French  priest 
in  our  day  thus  perplexed  and  tormented  by  the 
fascination  of  pure  oppugnation,  and  well-nigh  im- 
possible to  encounter  a  Frenchman  of  any  kind  so 
persuaded  that  to  differ  morally  from  himself  was 
ipso  facto  witness  of  degradation. 

The  travelling  Frenchman  rarely  exhibits  this  pe- 
dantic order  of  contempt  for  the  foreign  phenomena 
with  which  he  comes  in  contact.  He  often  miscon- 
ceives and  misinterprets  them  most  absurdly,  and 
the  serenity  of  his  superiority  on  such  occasions  has, 
first  and  last,  afforded  a  good  deal  of  amusement. 
The  newspaper  letters  of  the  French  correspondents 
are  sometimes  as  good  reading  on  account  of  the 
picturesqueness  of  their  blunders  as  for  any  other 
reason.  The  conceit  is  colossal.  But  it  arises  from 
ignorance  and  misconception,  from  a  certain  help- 


294  FRENCH  TRAITS 

lessness  in  the  presence  of  what  is  unfamiliar  that 
fairly  paralyzes  even  Gallic  curiosity,  and  throws 
the  victim  back  on  his  own  nation's  eminence,  with 
whose  justification  he  is  much  more  at  home.  It  is 
never  combined  with  feeling,  and  generally  contents 
itself  with  such  comparisons  as  observation  suggests. 
Our  pedants,  on  the  other  hand,  are  constantly  oc- 
cupied with  inferences  of  the  most  fundamental  na- 
ture drawn  from  the  most  trivial  circumstances. 
In  the  case  of  the  travelling  Briton,  the  view  of 
novel  objects  seems  actually  to  distil  dislike.  En- 
countering abroad,  for  example,  a  strange  costume, 
the  Frenchman  finds  it  in  bad  taste,  the  English- 
man conceives  a  contempt  for  the  wearer.  Both 
positions  are  equally  unwarrantable,  very  Hkely,  but 
it  is  clear  that  the  provincialism  of  the  latter  only  is 
pedantic.  We  are  all  familiar  with  the  budget  of 
opinions  about  foreigners  with  which  our  kindest 
and  gentlest  travellers  return  from  Europe  :  the 
filth  of  Italy,  the  stupidity  of  the  Germans,  the  in- 
sincerity of  the  French,  the  ridiculousness  of  the 
English,  the  atrocity  of  the  Spanish  cuisine,  their  ul- 
tra-radical conviction  of  American  superiority  in  all 
these  instances  being  based  on  the  simple  fact  of 
difference.  No  French  traveller  looks  at  foreign 
phenomena  in  this  way,  and  though  his  conviction 
of  French  superiority  may  be  as  unsound  at  bot- 
tom, yet,  so  far  as  he  is  concerned,  it  is  more  intelli- 
gent, less  exclusively  sentimental,  as  well  as  less  un- 
charitable— one  is  tempted  to  add,  less  unchristian. 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  295 

The  explanation  is  that  the  French  provincial 
spirit,  like  other  French  traits,  is  thoroughly  im- 
personal. The  individual,  everywhere  subordinated 
to  the  state  and  the  community,  appears  himself 
curiously  unrelated  to  the  very  object  of  his  char- 
acteristic adoration.  Personally  speaking,  his  pro- 
vincialism is  impartial.  He  does  not  admire  France 
because  she  is  his  country.  His  complacence  with 
himself  proceeds  from  the  circumstance  that  he  is  a 
Frenchman  ;  which  is  distinctly  what  he  is  first,  be- 
ing a  man  afterward.  And  his  pride  in  France  by  no 
means  proceeds  from  her  production  of  such  men  as 
he  and  his  fellows,  but  from  what  France,  com- 
posed of  his  fellows  and  himself,  accomplishes  and 
represents.  One  never  hears  the  Frenchman  boast 
of  the  character  and  quality  of  his  compatriots,  as 
Englishmen  and  ourselves  do.  He  is  thinking  about 
France,  about  her  diflferent  gloires,  about  her  posi- 
tion at  the  head  of  civilization.  His  country  is  to 
him  an  entity,  a  concrete  and  organic  force,  with 
whose  work  in  the  world  he  is  extremely  proud  to 
be  natively  associated,  without  at  the  same  time  be- 
ing very  acutely  conscious  of  contributing  thereto 
or  sharing  the  responsibility  therefor.  He  is,  ac- 
cordingly, a  marvel  of  candor  in  discussions  relating 
to  France,  of  which  in  detail  he  is  an  unsparing 
and  acute  critic.  One  wonders  often  at  his  ad- 
missions, which  seem  drastic,  not  to  say  fundament- 
al. We  forget  that  he  always  has  France  in  reserve 
— that  organic  conception  which  every  Frenchman 


296  FRENCH   TRAITS 

liolds  80  firmly,  owing  to  the  closeness  of  texture  in 
the  national  life  since  the  nation's  birth.  In  discus- 
sions of  this  kind  his  attitude  is  very  well  expressed 
by  a  fine  mot  of  the  Due  d'Aumale,  who,  during  the 
Bazaine  trial,  when  the  inculpated  marshal  exclaim- 
ed, in  justification  of  his  treason,  that  there  was  no 
longer  any  government  left,  any  order,  any  author- 
ity to  obey,  said,  "  II  y  avail  encore  la  France,  mon- 
sieur!" The  national  life  of  England  has  been 
nearly  as  long  and  no  doubt  as  glorious  as  that  of 
France  ;  but,  owing  to  its  looseness  of  texture,  to 
the  incomplete  way  in  which  it  has  absorbed  the  in- 
dividual, the  individual  himself  seems  to  make  its 
dignity  and  eminence  subjects  of  constant  concern. 
And  so  much  personal  emotion  is  in  his  case  associ- 
ated with  this  preoccupation,  that  nowhere  more 
conspicuously  than  in  his  chauvinism  does  he  illus- 
trate the  disposition  of  Dr.  Johnson,  "  who,"  says 
Emerson,  "  a  doctor  in  the  schools,  would  jump  out 
of  his  syllogism  the  instant  his  major  proposition 
was  in  danger,  to  save  that  at  all  hazards."  Simi- 
larly with  ourselves. 

In  national  criticism  the  Frenchman,  on  the  other 
hand,  never  thinks  his  major  proposition  in  the 
least  danger.  This  perhaps  argues  an  intenser  na- 
tional conceit,  a  more  explicit  provinciaUsm,  but  it 
permits  a  certain  syllogistic  freedom  which  an 
Anglo-Saxon  can  only  envy.  Mr.  Arnold  notes  this 
characteristic  as  common  to  the  continentals  gener- 
ally in  his  inimitable  essay  entitled  "  My  Country- 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  297 

men."  "  It  makes  me  blush,"  he  says,  "  to  think 
how  I  winced  under  what  the  foreigners  said  of 
England  ;  how  I  longed  to  be  able  to  answer  it ; 
how  I  rejoiced  at  hearing  from  the  English  press 
that  there  was  nothing  at  all  in  it,  when  I  see  the 
noble  frankness  with  which  these  foreigners  judge 
themselves."  But  I  think  this  frankness  is  espec- 
ially characteristic  of  the  French,  and  it  is,  from  our 
point  of  view,  not  a  little  singular  that  it  should  be 
accompanied  by  the  most  intense  chauvinism. 
"  Modesty  is  doubt,"  says  Balzac,  and  the  French 
thus  judge  themselves  so  frankly,  very  likely,  be- 
cause they  are  lacking  in  that  modesty  which  the 
screaming  of  our  eagle  and  the  roar  of  the  British 
lion  attest  as  an  Anglo-Saxon  trait.  At  all  events, 
the  French,  with  their  excessively  rational  way  of 
looking  at  things,  esteem  modesty  a  defect  rather 
than  a  quality,  both  in  nations  and  individuals,  and 
rarely  use  the  word  except  in  the  enumeration  of 
feminine  charms,  or  in  the  extended  sense  of  "  un- 
pretentiousness" — as,  for  example,  a  modest  savant. 
And  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  the  French  have  a 
particular  justification  for  their  ignorance  of  foreign 
national  worth  and  accomplishment  which  people  of 
other  countries  are  without.  On  principles  which 
they  comprehend,  that  is  to  say,  such  principles  as 
state  action,  organic  development,  scientific  study 
of  special  problems,  co-operation,  and  centralization 
— every  principle,  in  fact,  in  accordance  with  which 
the  common  activities  of  an    entire  nation  are  to  be 


298  FRENCH   TRAITS 

directed — France  presents  as  a  nation  a  far  more 
definite  and  concrete  figure  than  any  other.  St%- 
lishmen,  Italians,  Americans  may  excel  in  a  hun- 
dred ways,  but  they  are  not  excellences  to  which 
England,  Italy,  America  concretely  contribute  as 
nations.  In  the  way  of  direct  national  accomplish- 
ment, the  work  of  France  is  certainly  more  palpa- 
ble than  that  of  other  nations.  We  build  for  ex- 
ample, an  astonishing  number  of  miles  of  railway 
every  year,  but  what  we  mean  by  "  America"  is  no 
more  associated  with  it  than  it  is  with  the  lev}dng  of  a 
thirty  per  cent,  duty  on  foreign  art.  M.  de  Lesseps's 
success  or  failure  is,  on  the  other  hand,  intimately 
and  directly  French.  It  is  by  no  means  altogether 
because  French  national  accomplishment  is  almost 
always  a  government  affair,  whereas  we  make  "  pri- 
vate enterprise  "  the  great  protagonist  of  our  na- 
tional drama.  It  is  because  in  France  the  govern- 
ment is  in  all  matters  of  this  kind  so  thoroughly 
representative,  so  wholly  a  popular  agent.  The  re- 
sult is  that  "  France  "  is  far  more  real  to  a  French- 
man's intelligence  than  "  America  "  is  to  ours,  how- 
ever much  our  subjective  sentiment  may  atone  for 
the  lack  of  national  palpability.  Of  "private  en- 
terprise," of  the  attainment  of  magnificent  results 
through  pure  sentiment,  through  a  loose  social 
organization,  ^through  a  consistent  inconsistency, 
the  Frenchman  has  no  notion.  These  are  principles 
of  w^hich  he  does  not  comprehend  the  workings. 
But,  as  I  say,  the  results  of  those  principles  whose 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  299 

workings  he  does  comprehend  are  far  more  consider- 
able in  France  than  elsewhere.  In  the  line  of  social 
and  political  problems  whose  solution  depends  upon 
the  conscious  and  precise  regulation,  ordering,  and 
development  of  an  entire  society,  French  experimen- 
tation has,  in  variety,  scope,  and  thorough-going 
audacity,  been  so  far  in  excess  of  that  of  other  mod- 
ern peoples  that  it  seems  to  him  idle  to  examine  the 
history  of  the  latter.  Since  the  Revolution  and  the 
adoption  of  the  Code  Napoleon,  for  instance,  the 
phenomena  marking  the  gradual  rise  of  the  English 
democracy  naturally  seem  to  him  interesting  mainly 
from  a  humanitarian  point  of  view,  and  only  indi- 
rectly instructive.  And  as  for  studying  the  details 
of  our  social  system,  to  take  another  popular  ex- 
ample, whereby  American  relations  between  men 
and  women  are  secured,  he  necessarily  feels  that 
this  would  be  rather  curious  than  profitable  to  him, 
because  of  his  conviction  that  these  relations,  if  they 
are  what  our  admirers  maintain,  are  owing  more  to 
the  favor  of  Heaven  than  to  that  human  ordering 
upon  which  his  own  society  must  inevitably  and  ex- 
clusively continue  to  depend. 

This  justification  for  French  provincialism  appears 
especially  clear  in  the  matter  of  French  ignorance 
of  foreign  languages.  Such  ignorance  is  nearly  uni- 
versal in  France,  and  the  French  have  greatly  suf- 
fered from  it  both  in  peace  and  war.  They  are  now 
making  a  heroic,  but  probably  not  very  systematic 
or  successful  effort,  to  remedv  the  evil.     It  is  one  of 


300  FRENCH   TRAITS 

the  "lessons"  of  the  late  conflict  with  Prussia,  like 
the  lesson  of  mobilization  and  full  rosters.  But  cer- 
tainly one  reason  of  their  linguistic  limitedness  is 
the  circumstance  that  for  them  the  acquisition  of 
foreign  languages  is  in  the  nature  of  a  pure  accom- 
plishment ;  and  for  accomplishments  as  such  the 
French  care  very  little.  In  this  respect  their  atti- 
tude is  far  less  provincial  than  our  polyglot  pas- 
sion for,  in  Mr.  Arnold's  happy  phrase,  "fighting 
the  battle  of  Hfe  with  the  waiters  in  foreign  hotels." 
They  view  language  as  a  distinct  expression  of  defi- 
nite thought  and  for  this,  rightly  or  wrongly,  they 
think  French  suffices — chronicles  what  of  that  has 
been  expressed.  Had  they  the  sentimental,  the 
poetic,  the  religious  temperament,  they  would  be 
drawn  toward  an  effort  to  appreciate  English  po- 
etry, which  is  of  course  absolutely  untranslatable. 
But  not  to  possess  the  poetic  temperament  is  not  of 
itself  to  be  provincial  ;  and,  lacking  it,  an  acquain- 
tance with  English  would  teach  the  French  less  than 
we  are  apt — proviucially — to  imagine  that  would  be 
new  to  them.  Even  of  English  poetry,  there  has 
been  no  happier  general  eulogy  than  that  of  Vol- 
taire, and  despite  the  provinciality  of  the  recent 
French  rendering  of  "  Hamlet  "  (where,  beside  the 
distortion  of  ideas,  M.  Dumas's  authority  lends  itself 
to  such  ludicrous  errors  as  the  confusion  of  "canon" 
and  "cannon")  no  one  has  characterized  Shakespeare 
more  discriminatingly  than  M.  Henry  Cochin,  whose 
commentary  is  worth  a  volume  of  Ulrician  profun- 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  301 

dity.  But,  poetry  aside,  all  those  prohUmes  de  la  vie, 
which  are  so  much  more  definitely  treated  in  prose, 
are  treated  in  French  so  copiously  as  in  a  measure  to 
justify  French  preoccupation  with  French  literature, 
which,  indeed,  is  familiar  to  and  studied  by  French- 
men as  English  rarely  is  among  ourselves.  It  is  im- 
possible to  conceive  of  even  Goethe,  the  incarnation 
of  the  cosmopolitan  spirit,  except  as  in  part  the  pro- 
duct of  French  influences  ;  and  the  fact  that  the 
French  can  show  no  one  who  used  German  as  Heine 
used  French,  is  not  so  much  witness  of  their  pro- 
vincial attitude,  as  of  the  unprovincial  spirit  of  the 
French  language.  French  has  more  concrete  and 
crystallized  things  to  tell  us  than  any  other  modern 
tongue  and  the  majority  of  people  can  get  only  dis- 
tinct things  from  a  language  that  is  not  their  own. 
That  is  why  to  our  average  man  French  is  more 
profitable  than  English  is  to  the  majority  of  French- 
men. Only  subtle  and  delicate  minds,  such  as  are 
in  any  country  the  rare  exceptions,  catch  the  charac- 
teristic aroma,  the  peculiar  perfume,  the  racial  point 
of  view  of  a  foreign  literature.  No  one  has  more 
discriminatingly  expressed  the  value  of  studying 
foreign  literatures  than  Doudan  in  calling  it  a  means 
of  awakening  one's  own  national  genius  ;  "  it  is " 
says  he,  "like  the  sound  of  the  trumpet  which  gave 
Saunderson  the  notion  of  scarlet."  For  the  cosmo- 
politanism evinced  in  studying  Ollendorf,  Doudan 
would  certainly  entertain  a  very  slight  esteem. 
In  fine,  the  peculiarity  of  the  French  provincia] 


302  FRENCH   TRAITS 

spirit  is  that,  for  the  most  part,  its  manifestations 
are  national  and  not  individual.  Toward  other  na- 
tions abstractly,  and  toward  the  people  of  other  na- 
tions in  the  concrete,  it  is  exhibited  in  very  nearly 
the  proportion  in  which  it  is  aroused  by  the  exclu- 
sive contemplation  and  knowledge  of  France  itself. 
But  its  reaction  upon  the  individual  in  his  own  en- 
vironment is  scarcely  apparent.  Where  neither 
France  nor  the  foreigner  is  directly  in  question,  un- 
provincial  is  precisely  the  epithet  for  the  French- 
man's mental  attitude  and  processes.  The  French- 
man makes  so  much  of  his  position  as  a  member  of 
a  society  whose  texture  is  extremely  close,  he  em- 
ploys his  relations  to  his  surroundings  in  such  con- 
stant and  salutary  fashion,  that  personally  he  avoids 
nearly  every  mark  of  the  provincial  spirit.  He  has 
little  of  its  narrowness,  its  self-concentration,  its  un- 
remittent  experimentation,  its  confusion  of  relative 
with  absolute  values.  It  is,  for  example,  especially 
a  mark  of  the  provincial  spirit  to  take  one's  self  too 
seriously.  To  take  one's  self  too  seriously  is  the 
distinguishing  trait  at  once  of  the  pedant  and  the 
amateur — the  person  who  attaches  an  excessive  impor- 
tance to  trifles,  and  the  person  who  attacks  lightly 
matters  of  great  dignity  and  difficulty  ;  two  arche- 
types, one  may  say,  of  the  provincialism  illustrated 
by  Anglo-Saxons.  At  home,  certainly,  however  he 
may  appear  abroad,  the  Frenchman  takes  himself 
far  less  seriously  than  the  Englishman  or  the  Ameri- 
can is  apt  to  do  under  sufficient  provocation,  unre- 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  303 

strained  as  both  are  by  either  the  dread  or  the  dan- 
ger of  that  ridicule  which  operates  with  such  salutary 
universality  in  France.  Beside  the  pedant  and  the 
amateur,  i\\efat  is  conspicuously  a  cosmopolitan,  or, 
at  least,  a  cockney  product.  The  badaud  himself  is 
a  very  catholic-minded  character  ;  he  sinks  himself 
in  his  surroundings.  Note  the  essential  diflference, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  provincialism,  between 
him  and  the  prig — especially  that  latest  and  least 
attractive  variety  of  the  species  by  which  at  present 
our  own  society  is  infested,  and  from  which  France 
is  free — the  prig  bent  on  self-improvement.  An 
environment  whose  cosmopolitanism  is  a  pervasive 
force,  instead  of  mainly  a  mere  lack  of  positive  na- 
tionality, cannot  develop  a  being  of  whom  it  is  the 
cardinal  characteristic  that  his  constant  discipline 
and  effort  are  exercised  uniformly  at  the  expense  of 
others.  So  perfectly  are  the  amateur  and  the 
pedant  fused  in  him  that  the  most  trivial  conversa- 
tion is  in  his  eyes  an  opportunity  ;  he  takes  notes 
for  self-education  on  the  most  sacred  and  solemn 
occasions ;  at  dinner-parties  he  is  studying  eti- 
quette, at  the  whist-table  he  is  improving  his  game, 
at  church  he  is  exercising  his  memory,  in  a  neigh- 
bor's house  or  a  picture  gallery,  his  taste  ;  he  has 
no  intimacy  too  great  for  him  to  employ  in  practis- 
ing his  voice,  his  gestures,  his  carriage,  his  de- 
meanor— his  whole  environment,  in  fact,  animate 
and  inanimate,  friend  and  foe,  he  remorselessly 
sacrifices  to  his  implacable   purpose  of   educating 


304  FRENCH  TRAITS 

himself,  whatever  may  happen.  And  that  he  may 
advance  in  virtue  as  in  wisdom  he  lets  slip  no  oppor- 
tunity of  educating  others.  No  description,  indeed, 
of  a  society  which  lacks  him,  can  be  more  vivid  and 
positive  to  a  society  which  possesses  him,  than  the 
mention  of  his  absence.  One  infers  at  once  in  such 
a  society  a  free  and  effortless  play  of  the  faculties, 
a  large,  humorous,  and  tolerant  view  of  one's  self 
and  others,  leisure,  calm,  healthful  and  rational  vi- 
vacity, a  tranquil  confidence  in  one's  own  perceptions 
and  in  the  intelligence  of  one's  neighbors — charac- 
teristics which,  very  likely,  have  in  turn  their  weak 
side,  but  which  indicate  the  lurban,  the  metropoli- 
tan, the  mundane  attitude  of  a  community  wherein 
men  rub  against  and  polish  each  other,  and  exclude 
the  village  or  conventual  ideal  of  laborious  effort, 
careless  of  the  present,  forgetful  of  the  past,  its  ar- 
dent gaze  fixed  on  a  vague  recompense,  in  an  indef- 
inite future,  to  the  successful  contestant  in  a  rigorous 
competitive  examination. 

Religion,  too,  has  contributed  as  largely  in  France 
to  the  absence  of  the  pi'ovincial  spirit  as  it  has  fur- 
thered the  social  instinct  by  tending  to  social  con- 
cert and  social  expansion.  Not  only,  that  is  to  say, 
has  religion  in  France  exercised  the  influence  pecu- 
liar to  Catholicism,  but  Catholicism  has  there  been 
without  a  rival.  Protestantism  exists.  The  Re- 
formed Chvirch  is  indeed  supported  by  the  state  on 
a  perfectly  proportionate  equality  with  Catholicism, 
but  the  blood  of  the  martyrs  has  not  been  its  seed, 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  305 

and  it  does  not  really  count.  The  leading  Paris 
newspaper  is  Protestant ;  many  of  the  leading  men 
are  of  Huguenot  descent  and  cherish  Protestant  tra- 
ditions. But  these  themselves  discuss  every  ques- 
tion from  a  Catholic  stand-point,  and  it  never  occurs 
to  them  that  society  is  not  homogeneously  Catholic. 
Catharine  de'  Medici  is  in  this  respect  as  much  the 
creator  of  modern  France  as  Henry  VHI.  is  of  mod- 
ern England  or  Philip  H.  of  modern  Spain.  It  is  so 
far  from  easy  to  be  content  with  her  work  that  the 
Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  seems  to  me  the  great- 
est misfortune  that  has  ever  befallen  France.  Com- 
pared with  it  the  Prussian  invasion  of  1870  and  the 
loss  of  Alsace-Lorraine  seem  insignificant ;  when 
we  think  of  the  France  of  Coligny's  time  and  its  po- 
tentialities, the  France  of  to-day,  even  post-revolu- 
tionary France,  is,  in  certain  directions,  a  disap- 
pointment. But  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  to  the 
Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  and  the  Kevocation  of 
the  Edict  of  Nantes  are  attributable  the  religious 
homogeneousness  of  Fi'ench  society,  and,  conse- 
quently, its  composure,  its  serenity,  its  absence  of 
the  provincial  spirit  in  one  of  the  profoundest,  and 
most  sacred,  and  most  influential  of  human  concerns. 
The  humanizing  effect  of  unity  in  religion  is  one 
of  those  phenomena  which  have  only  to  be  mention- 
ed to  be  immediately  appreciated.  The  attitude  of 
superstition  itself  is  really  far  less  provincial  than 
the  attitude  of  scepticism.  The  one  is  traditional 
and  social  in  its  nature,  the  other  of  necessity  soli- 
20 


S06  FRENCH   TRAITS 

tary  and  personal  Even  superstition  implies  a 
placid  and  serene  sympathy  between  its  victim  and 
his  environment.  Sophocles,  Virgil,  Raphael,  Shakes- 
peare, Erasmus,  Goethe  —how  distinct  is  the  urban- 
ity, the  felicity  of  rounded  and  complete  harmony 
which  the  mere  mention  of  these  names  reminds  us 
they  illustrate  in  common !  How  different  it  is 
from  the  notion  called  up  by  the  mention  of  Luther, 
Calvin,  Bunyan,  Knox,  Byron,  Carlyle !  Apollo  is 
one  type  and  Achilles  is  quite  another.  To  fight  it 
out  for  one's  self  in  the  sphere  of  religion  ;  to 
forge  one's  own  credo  out  of  materials  painfully  se- 
lected from  the  workshops  of  the  ages  ;  not  to  feel 
one's  self  sustained  and  supported  by  human  sym- 
pathy in  the  supreme  human  concern  ;  to  assume 
the  objector's  attitude,  to  place  one's  self  at  the 
sceptic's  view-point,  to  particularize  laboriously  and 
sift  evidence  with  scrupulous  care  in  a  matter  so 
positive,  so  attractive,  and  so  universal — how  can 
this  fail  to  stimulate  in  one  the  provincial  temper, 
the  provincial  spirit?  The  social  instinct  recoils 
in  the  face  of  such  a  prospect. 

The  tendency  of  unity  is  to  magnify  the  worship, 
of  diversity  to  magnify  the  philosophy,  of  religion. 
How  many  scores  of  conscientious  and  piously-dis- 
posed young  men  at  the  moment  when  "  choice  is 
brief  and  yet  endless  "  cut  themselves  off  entirely 
from  the  former  because  they  cannot  make  up  their 
minds  clearly  as  to  the  latter  !  Everyone's  experi- 
ence has  acquainted  him  with  the  phenomenon  of 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  307 

"  truly  religious  souls  "  debarred  from  the  commun- 
ion of  saints,  not  to  say  impelled  toward  the  com- 
munion of  sinners,  by  what  Kenan  calls  "  the  narrow 
judgments  of  the  frivolous  man."  The  kindred  phe- 
nomenon resulting  from  the  narrow  and  frivolous 
judgments  of  the  truly  religious  soul  itself,  is  scarce- 
ly less  frequent.  In  New  England,  at  any  rate, 
where  the  old  Arian  heresy  redivivus  has  produced 
such  luxuriant  intellectual  fruit,  it  is  not  an  infre- 
quent occurrence  to  find  the  anxious  seat  filled  with 
candidates  carefully  conning  the  difierent  "  confes- 
sions," the  mind  concentrated  on  the  importance  of 
an  intelligent  and  impartial  selection,  preHminary  to 
the  satisfaction  of  the  soul's  highest  need.  "  The 
experience  of  many  opinions  gives  to  the  mind  great 
flexibility  and  fortifies  it  in  those  it  believes  the 
best,"  says  Joubert.  Nothing  can  be  truer  and 
nothing  more  just  than  the  high  praise  that  haa 
been  given  to  this  remark.  But  it  is  surely  applic- 
able to  philosophy  rather  than  to  religion,  and  if  ap- 
plied to  religious  philosophy  it  should  be  read  in 
conjunction  with  that  other  and  profoundly  spiritual 
saying  of  Joubert :  "  It  is  not  hard  to  know  God, 
provided  one  will  not  force  one's  self  to  define  him  ;" 
or  this  :  "  Make  truth  lovely,  and  do  not  try  to 
arm  her." 

The  great  word  of  religion  is  peace,  and  controversy 
here,  however  practical  it  may  be,  is  indisputably 
provincial.  Controversy  has  become  so  character- 
istic of  our  sectarianism,  it  is  believed  in  so  sincerely, 


308  FRENCH   TRAITS 

it  is,  in  eflfect,  so  necessary  as  a  protection  against 
the  insidiousness  of  superstition,  that  one  distrusts 
its  universal  eflScacy  at  his  peril.  No  one,  failing  to 
see  how  this  must  be  so,  can  fail  to  observe  that  it 
is  in  fact  so  when  he  contemplates  many  of  the 
manifestations  of  the  controversial  spirit  in  which 
our  society  abounds.  A  not  infrequent  spiritual  ex- 
perience, for  example,  is  this :  a  person  of  inbred 
piety,  infinitely  attracted  by  the  beauty  of  holiness, 
comes  in  contact  with  the  scientific  and  scrutinizing 
spirit  of  the  age.  The  unity  of  nature,  the  univer- 
sal identity  of  her  undertakings,  which,  as  Thoreau 
says,  are  "  sure  and  never  fail,"  make  a  profound 
impression  on  him.  He  is  unable  to  credit  or  con- 
ceive of  their  overruling  to  the  end  that  spiritual 
truth  may  be  attested  by  thaumaturgy.  He  pays 
dearly  for  his  inability.  It  excludes  him  from  fel- 
lowship with  spirits  a  thousand  times  more  akin  to 
his  own  than  he  can  find  outside  the  doors  guarded 
by  the  flaming  sword  of  an  inflexible  credo.  He  be- 
gins, nevertheless,  to  adjust  himself  to  his  position. 
Soon  he  proceeds  to  vaunt  it,  out  of  sheer  self-re- 
spect. His  heart  becomes  hardened  ;  his  intellect 
freezes  ;  finally  he  finds  a  haven  in  a  society  for 
ethical  culture,  whose  cardinal  tenet  it  is  that  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  too  simple  for  application 
to  the  immensely  diversified  needs  of  our  complex 
modem  society.  He  may  not  have  lost  his  own  soul, 
but  he  has  certainly  not  gained  the  whole  world, 
nor  any  considerable  part  of  it     The  world  stamps 


THE   PROVINCIAL   SPIRIT  300 

him  and  his  society  as  essentially  provincial,  and 
turns  with  relief  to  the  fellowship  of  quarters  where- 
in the  beautiful  and  the  good  stand  in  no  terror  of 
the  tyranny  of  truth.  From  this  variety  of  provin- 
ciahsm,  at  least,  the  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew 
and  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  have 
done  much  to  spare  France,  both  in  her  religion  and 
her  irreligion. 

It  would,  indeed,  be  very  difficult  to  persuade  a 
Frenchman  visiting  America  of  our  good  faith  in 
charging  him  with  provincialism  in  any  regard. 
Every  contrast  with  things  French  which  meets  his 
eye  must  enforce  his  sense  of  our  rudimentary  and 
undeveloped  condition.  He  could  not  fail  to  find 
our  theatres,  some  of  our  churches,  our  conception 
of  his  interest  in  cemeteries  and  penal  institutions, 
the  transparent  dresses  of  our  women  on  undress, 
and  their  high-necked  "  gowns  "  on  dress,  occasions, 
our  diversified  tastes  in  the  matter  of  feminine  bon- 
nets and  masculine  beards,  our  bathing  costumes 
and  manners,  our  lack  of  police  efficiency,  our  cui- 
sine, the  attire  and  conduct  of  that  immense  class 
among  us  in  whom  gentility  is  uneasily  nascent,  and 
our  categorical  and  serious  defence  of  these  and 
scores  of  other  peculiarities,  exactly  to  be  character- 
ized by  the  epithet  provincial.  He  would  probably 
be  unabashed  even  by  our  "men  of  general  informa- 
tion " — a  product  in  which,  perhaps,  we  may  defy 
competition.  He  would  certainly  maintain  that  in 
France  there  are  more  people  who  have  an  academic 


310  FREXCH   TRAITS 

and  critical  knowledge  of  "  life "  and  character, 
people  whose  judgments  of  the  innumerable  and 
immensely  varied  phenomena  of  life  and  character, 
of  art  and  science,  are  independent  without  being 
capricious.  "The  range  within  which  these  judg- 
ments are  restricted  seems  limited  to  you,"  he  would 
assert,  "  mainly,  perhaps,  because  yours  is  extended 
into  the  region  of  triviaUty.  Prices  of  every  sort 
from  pictures  to  mess  pork,  railway  time-tables, 
tinkering,  horse  and  dog  lore,  stitches,  sports,  the 
mysteries  of  plumbing,  old  furniture,  pottery  marks, 
in  fact,  all  that  desultory  and  fragmentary  *  informa- 
tion '  with  which  your  as  yet  unsystematized  strug- 
gle with  nature  seems  to  encrust  so  many  among 
you,  is  what,  on  the  contrary,  we  regard  as  really 
limited  and  limiting.  And,  in  general,  a  crystal- 
lized and  highly  developed  community  seems  pro- 
viucii^l  to  the  nomad  and  the  adventurer,  whether 
he  be  a  Bedouin  or  a  WaU  Street  broker,  because  it 
has  traditions,  local  pride,  public  spirit,  and  organic 
relations  ;  because,  great  or  small,  it  is  and  stands 
for  something  at  once  definite  and  complex,  and  is 
not  merely  a  part  of  the  amorphous  universe  where 
nothing  is  settled,  where  there  is  no  code  to  sys- 
tematize the  general  scramble,  and  where  industry 
and  enterprise  thrive  at  a  tremendous  cost  to  the 
ensemble,  and  substitute  a  starthng  social  chiaro- 
oscuro  for  the  just  pictorial  values  of  civilization. 
Paris  is  '  provincial '  in  the  same  way  as  your  oldest 
and  maturest  city  is.     Like  Boston,  it  seems  '  pro- 


THE   I'UOVIXCIAL    HPIIIIT  311 

vincial '  to  the  New  Yorker  and  the  Chicagoan  be- 
cause it  is  80  completely  organic,  because  it  is  so 
distinctly  a  community  instead  of  being  merely  a 
piece  broken  off  the  wida,  wide  world.  The  desert 
of  Saliara  is  not  *  provincial ; '  as  Balzac  said,  '  It  is 
nothing  and  yet  everything,  for  God  is  there  and 
man  is  not ! '  You  Americans  strike  us  as  unpro- 
vincial,  I  may  observe,  mainly  in  this  Sahara  sense." 
At  the  same  time — we  may,  I  think,  legitimately 
rejoin — the  catholic  and  cosmopolitan  spirit  which 
leads  Emerson  to  find  not  provincialism  but  "  char- 
acteristic nationaHty "  in  Madame  de  Stael's  per- 
emptory "  Conversation,  like  talent,  exists  only  in 
France,"  is  probably  rarer  in  France  than  in  an  en- 
vironment where  there  is,  if  not  more  of  God,  at  any 
rate  less  of  man. 


IX 

DEMOCRACY 


DEMOCRACY 

"Horace  tells  us,"  says  Gouvemeur  Morris,  in  a 
letter  from  Paris  to  the  Comte  de  Moustier,  French 
Ambassador  to  the  United  States,  *'  that  in  crossing 
the  seas  we  change  our  climate,  not  our  souls.  But 
I  can  say  what  he  could  not,  that  I  find  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic  a  strong  resemblance  to  what  I  left 
on  the  other — a  nation  which  exists  in  hopes,  pros- 
pects, and  expectations."  This  was  in  1789,  and 
though  of  course  each  country  has  to-day  fewer  ex- 
pectations to  realize  than  it  had  then,  an  American 
in  France  must  still  be  impressed  by  the  same  cor- 
respondence of  national  attitude — by  the  vivacious 
and  confident  way  of  looking  forward  to  the  future 
which  the  French  people,  and,  perhaps,  the  French 
people  alone,  share  with  ourselves.  Our  own  anima- 
tion is  partly  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  fact  which  Carlyle 
pointed  out,  namely,  that  we  have  "  a  great  deal  of 
land  for  a  very  few  people."  It  is  due  also  to  our 
belief  in  the  American  character.  But  it  resembles 
the  analogous  French  elation  in  being  also  based 
on  confidence  in  democratic  institutions.  Demo- 
cratic institutions,  however,  may  differ  widely,  and 
it  is  undoubtedly  the  very  considerable  difference 


316  FRENCH  TRAITS 

between  our  democracy  and  that  of  the  French  that 
is  responsible  for  our  very  popular  error,  which  as- 
sumes that  their  institutions  are  not  really,  and  in  so 
far  as  they  work  easily  and  with  promise  of  perma- 
nence, democratic  institutions  at  all.  That  this  eiTor 
is  a  little  ridiculous  does  not,  of  course,  prevent  it 
from  being  very  widespread  and  very  deeply  rooted. 
There  is  probably  no  countiy  in  which  the  French 
Revolution  is  less  understood  than  it  is  in  America. 
Its  ideality  first  of  all,  I  think,  distinguishes 
French  democracy  from  our  own.  Democracy  is  a 
creed,  that  is  to  say,  with  the  French — a  positive 
cult  rather  than  a  working  principle,  a  standard, 
general  test  of  particular  measures.  It  is  held 
consciously  and  with  conviction.  It  provokes  en- 
thusiasm. Its  devotees  have  had  to  die  for  ii  It 
is  not  merely  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course,  due 
originally  to  the  triumph  of  circumstances  over  na- 
tional characteristics,  as  was  measurably  the  case 
with  us.  Our  government,  it  is  true,  was,  as  General 
Collins  aptly  says,  "  the  child  of  revolution  nurtured 
on  philosophy."  But  it  is  perfectly  certain  that,  but 
for  Jefferson's  French  philosophy,  called  then  as 
now,  demagogic  Quixotism,  we  should  have  had  as 
short-lived  a  democratic  republic  as  Hamilton  proph- 
esied and  endeavored  to  compass.  Our  next  epoch 
made  a  nation  of  us,  and  crystallized  the  spirit  of 
nationality  in  democratic  form.  But  nothing  is 
more  significant  of  the  discredit  into  which  democ- 
racy, as  an  ideal,  has  fallen  among  us  than  the  way 


DEMOCRACY  317 

in  which  this  formative  period  of  the  nation's 
growth  has  been  obscured  by  the  struggle  with 
slavery  which  immediately  followed  it,  and  during 
which  democracy,  as  an  ideal,  almost  wholly  disap- 
appeared.  Their  interest  in  the  preservation  of 
the  rights  of  States  allied  the  slaveholding  aristoc- 
racy with  democratic  philosophy,  and  the  alliance 
was  disastrous.  Democratic  philosophy  nearly  per- 
ished. It  ceased  to  be  propagated  among  "the 
best  people,"  as  they  are  called.  It  lost  its  hold  on 
the  mass  of  intelligence,  on  the  newspapers,  on  the 
college  graduates,  on  all  those  who  had  not  an  espe- 
cial capacity  for  keeping  their  heads  in  the  midst  of 
the  excitement  of  a  great  national  crisis,  the  right  set- 
tlement of  which  was  infinitely  more  important  than 
the  keeping  of  one's  head.  Inter  arma  silent  political 
principles  as  well  as  laws.  And  though  the  laws  may 
resume  their  sway  and  supreme  courts  reverse  their 
decisions  after  the  clash  of  arms  has  definitely  died 
away,  political  principles  that  have  once  lost  cur- 
rency have  irretrievably  lost  credit  also.  Great  men 
may  restore  to  them  their  popular  validity.  Had 
Abraham  Lincoln  lived,  perhaps  the  entire  political 
feeling  of  the  country  might  have  been  different. 
But  crises,  only,  produce  great  men,  and  now-a-days 
Lincoln's  lofty  maxim  has  really  become  transformed 
into  "government  of  the  people,  for  the  people,  by 
'the  best  people,'"  as  the  political  ideal  of  many  of 
our  purest  patriots  ;  though  it  may  be  questioned  if 
in  this  form  it  will  "make  the  tour  of  the  world." 


318  FRENCH  TRAITS 

We  have  in  large  measure  forgotten  our  heroic  phi- 
losophical genealogy.  Our  English  character  has 
come  to  the  surface  again,  and  necessarily  philoso- 
phy gives  place  to  casuistry. 

Our  democracy,  indeed,  was  not,  to  begin  with, 
anything  like  "the  child  of  revolution  nurtured  by 
philosophy,"  which  the  French  democracy  is.  We 
only  suJBfered  from  political  tyranny.  We  did  not 
rise  also  from  social  subjection.  Mainly  we  had  at 
the  outset  merely  the  independent  spirit,  the  native 
Anglo-Saxon  instinct  for  freedom — not  the  senti- 
ment of  equaUty  and  a  philosophical  belief  in  the 
essential  worthiness  of  man  as  man.  Gouvemeur 
Morris,  in  1790,  prefers  the  English  constitution  to 
the  French,  and  one  has  only  to  think  what  the 
EngUsh  constitution,  in  1790,  was,  to  perceive  the 
significance  of  such  a  preference.  And  Morris  was 
by  no  means  an  unrepresentative  American.  And 
the  French  constitution  of  1790  was  made  by  the 
upper  classes.  It  was  through  self-assertion  that 
we  triumphed,  whereas  the  French  won  their  auton- 
omy through  the  universal  appeal  of  principle.  And 
they  came  thus  to  love  the  abstraction  through 
which  they  conquered — at  first  fanatically,  and  now 
for  a  long  time  rationally ;  whereas  the  democratic 
creed  never  had  the  universal  validity  of  an  abstrac- 
tion to  us,  except  to  our  philosophic  minds,  like  Jef- 
ferson, for  example,  and  through  them  to  our  Dem- 
ocratic party.  Neither  Federalist  nor  Whig  ever 
thought  of  it  as  universal  at  all. 


DEMOCRACY  319 

Nor  have  their  successors  since.  The  great  mass 
of  our  people  undoubtedly  believe  in  democratic  in- 
stitutions for  Americans,  though  undoubtedly  an 
important  portion  of  our  "  wealth  and  intelligence" 
thinks  our  own  altogether  too  democratic.  But 
many  even  of  those  whose  politics  are  not  merely 
traditionary,  would  probably  echo  the  general  Anglo- 
Saxon  conviction,  that  institutions  in  themselves, 
democratic  or  other,  are  unimportant,  compared 
with  national  character ;  that  there  is  no  abstractly 
good  kind  of  government,  and  that  every  people 
should  have  the  kind  its  own  racial  constitution  and 
its  degree  of  development  call  for.  We  did,  to  be 
sure,  make  one  of  the  very  boldest  democratic  ex- 
periments that  any  society  ever  made  during  the  Re- 
construction period,  but  it  hardly  proceeded  from 
our  faith  in  universal  suffrage  as  a  civilizing  agent ; 
it  was  due  rather,  to  use  an  extenuating  epithet,  to 
political  diplomacy,  and  it  was  really  undemocrati- 
cally  imposed  on  an  unwilling  section  by  an  impe- 
rious one.  Probably  the  most  popular  cry  now  au- 
dible in  strictly  American  political  circles,  is  for  the 
regulation  of  immigration  and  naturalization,  in  or- 
der that  "  ignorance  and  poverty  "  may  be  fitted  for 
the  suffrage,  to  the  end  that  property  may  be  more 
secure,  and  "  hidden  and  forbidden  forces "  less 
powerful.  Sound  as  this  may  be,  it  is  a  long  way 
from  the  democratic  ideal  as  held  and  illustrated  by 
France.  It  is  not  consistent  with  an  enthusiastic 
subscription  to  the  gospel  of  Liberty,  Equtility,  Fra- 


320  FRENCH  TRAITS 

temity.  Its  tendency  is  rather  in  the  direction  of 
such  a  democracy  as  that  of  slaveholding  Athens  (so 
far  as  a  parallel  may  be  drawn  between  a  nation  of 
sixty  millions  of  people  and  a  community  "  at  most 
a  subprefecture "),  in  which  the  democratic  ideal 
found  expression  mainly  in  an  equality  of  the  elite. 
In  fine,  it  must  be  evident  to  all  close  observers 
that  the  ideal  of  government  by  "  the  best  people  " 
is  growing  with  us.  It  is  by  no  means  yet 
triumphant,  and  in  many  instances  it  is  so  closely 
associated  with  a  pharisaical  habit  of  mind,  that 
very  likely  our  many  publicans  and  sinners,  who  be- 
lieve in  democratic  institutions  at  least  for  them- 
selves, and  as  satisfying  their  individual  instincts 
of  independence,  vrill  contrive  to  keep  it  perma- 
nently under.  The  "masses"  are  solidifying,  per- 
haps, as  fast  as  the  "  classes "  crystallize,  and 
whereas  it  used  to  be  our  boast  that  our  cities  had 
no  "  populace,"  and  our  country  districts  no  "  peas- 
antry," we  shall  possibly  have  enough  of  both  to 
prevent  the  establishment  of  the  ideal  of  govern- 
ment by  "  the  best  people  " — by  the  people,  that  is 
to  say,  who  are  doing  their  reckless  utmost  toward 
the  production  of  the  American  proletariat  they  so 
abjectly  dread.  Of  course  in  America,  by  "  the  best 
people,"  we  do  not  yet  mean  the  richest ;  we  mean 
very  generally  the  most  intelligent  Mr.  Lowell, 
for  example,  who  courageously  patronizes  democracy 
in  England,  and  with  equal  courage  castigates  it  at 
home,  affirms  that  "  the  duty  of  the  more  intelligent 


DEMOCKACY  321 

is  to  govern  the  less  intelligent,"  It  is  a  matter 
mainly  of  color,  perhaps,  but  I  own  to  a  feeling  that 
when  Mr.  Lowell,  and  indeed  most  of  our  publicists 
who  have  cut  themselves  adrift  from  the  aristocratic 
pai'ty  on  questions  of  morals  and  taste  rather  than 
of  political  principles,  praise  the  democratic  creed, 
what  they  are  really  thinking  of  is  not  "Liberty, 
Equality,  Fraternity,"  but  the  New  England  town- 
meeting  of  earlier  and  better  days.  The  moment  the 
milieu  becomes  heterogeneous  and  uncolonial,  their 
democracy  seems  really  to  vanish  in  distrust  of  that 
average  man,  respect  for  whom  is  the  corner-stone 
of  the  French  democracy.  Whenever,  as  in  large 
cities,  elaborate  political  machinery  with  its  atten- 
dant evils  becomes  necessary,  it  is  significant  how 
instinctively  their  minds  turn  to  disfranchisement 
as  a  remedy.  No  one  has  eulogized  Lincoln  more 
sympathetically  than  Mr.  Lowell,  exercising  his  no- 
ble poetic  faculty.  But  it  is  difficult  to  fancy  the 
man  who  said  "  the  Lord  must  love  the  common 
people,  he  made  so  many  of  them,"  laying  much 
stress  upon  the  "  duty  of  the  intelligent  to  govern 
the  unintelligent."  And  undoubtedly  Mr.  Lowell's 
crisp  prose  just  now  appeals  to  "  the  intelligent " 
among  us  far  more  cogently  than  the  looser  demo- 
cratic feeling  of  Lincoln.  How  many  of  our  writers, 
whose  philosophic  utterances  have  any  credit,  would 
echo  La  Bruyere's  famous  *'  Faut-il  opter  ?  Je  veux 
etre  peuple." 

Our  democracy  indeed  shows  its  unideal  quality 
21 


322  FRENCH  TRAITS 

in  no  wise  more  clearly  than  in  the  exaltation  thus 
implied  of  character,  national  as  well  as  individ- 
ual, over  institutions.  We  like  our  institutions, 
in  cases  where  we  do  not  accept  them  with  amused 
resignation,  because  they  suit  us,  because  they  give 
us  personal  independence,  because  we  can — some 
of  us — grow  rich  under  them ;  and  not  at  all  be- 
cause per  se  we  admire  institutions,  are  attracted 
by  them,  and  believe  in  their  universality.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  the  French  notion  that  civilization 
means  the  improving  of  character  by  institutions. 
Mankind  tends  naturally  to  inequality.  Inequal- 
ity tends  naturally  to  establish  itself.  Inequality 
is  undemocratic  and  unciviUzed.  The  only  bulwark 
against  it  in  the  long  run  is  the  careful,  systematic, 
and  minute  formulation  of  political  principles  in  the 
light  of  reason,  aided  by  experience,  and  their  uni- 
versal application  as  institutions  to  the  society  sub- 
ject to  their  sway.  To  use  a  fanciful,  but  exact, 
figure,  whereas,  thus,  we  regard  institutions  as  anti- 
septic, the  French  consider  them  as  therapeutic. 
Our  democracy  is  a  working  hypothesis,  establishing 
the  lines  through  which  national  and  individual 
character  may  work  out  their  salvation.  French 
democracy  is  a  positive  and  highly  differentiated 
system,  designed  for  direct  and  active  agency  in  the 
securing  of  social  well-being  and  political  progress. 
Each  has,  of  course,  its  peculiar  peril  For  the  lack 
of  institutions  tending  to  secure  equality — as  di- 
rectly as  excise  laws  tend  to  promote  temperance. 


DEMOCRACY  323 

anti-lottery  laws  to  prevent  gambling,  anti-usury 
laws  to  prevent  extortion,  and  strict  divorce  laws  to 
promote  chastity — our  democracy  is  constantly 
menaced  by  the  growing  heterogeneity  of  our 
society,  the  geometrically  increasing  power  of  wealth, 
culture,  position.  For  the  lack  of  the  free  play  of 
individual  expansiveness  and  independence  inherent 
in  systematic  and  effective  organization,  the  French 
social  democracy  is  in  constant  danger  of  losing  its 
political  freedom.  And  the  effect  of  the  loss  of 
political  freedom  on  social  democracy  is  one  of 
constant  and  subtle  attrition. 

I  must  say,  however,  I  think  the  French  are  more 
conscious  of  their  danger  than  we  are  of  ours.  In- 
deed, this  particular  one  I  have  mentioned  is  the 
only  political  peril  concerning  which  we  seem  just 
now  to  be  displaying  no  anxiety  whatever.  Our 
pessimists  are  optimistic  on  this  point.  But  the 
experience  of  France,  in  the  difficulties  of  securing 
and  sustaining  democracy,  has  been  considerably 
greater  than  our  own.  And  this  circumstance  has 
doubtless  done  much  to  strengthen,  as  well  as  to 
sober,  the  ideality  with  which  its  mainly  philosophic, 
instead  of  mainly  practical  origin,  endued  it  at  the 
outset.  And  the  particular  practical  form  which 
this  ideality  takes  on,  distinguishes  French  de- 
mocracy from  ours,  in  even  greater  measure  than 
does  the  positive  spirit  from  which  it  proceeds.  Its 
great  practical  distinction,  in  a  word,  is  that  it  is  at 
once  popular  and  authoritative.     We  are  accustomed 


324  FRENCH  TRAITS 

to  believe  the  two  qualities  incompatible.  Author- 
itative government  is  inseparable  in  our  minds  from 
what  is  called  paternal  government,  and  we  feel 
that  if  government  with  us  should  show  any  par- 
ticular authoritativeness,  even  in  the  way  of  greater 
efficiency  of  administration,  it  would  infallibly,  to 
just  that  extent,  lose  its  popular  character.  But 
when  the  popular  character  of  a  government  is 
secured,  not  by  the  cordial  initiative  of  independent 
individuals  inspired  by  intelligently  understood  in- 
terest, but  by  a  natural  enthusiasm  for  the  demo- 
cratic ideal,  rationally  interpreted  and  vigorously  im- 
posed, it  is  easy  to  see  that  it  may  be  as  authoritative, 
or  even  as  intolerant,  as  it  finds  it  effective  to  be, 
without  really  sacrificing  anything  of  its  essentially 
popular  nature.  No  one  can  have  lived  in  France, 
at  all  events,  since  the  establishment  of  the  present 
Republic,  without  observing  how  popular  the  govern- 
ment is.  Everyone  talks  politics.  People  every- 
where are  politically  alive,  however  remiss  they 
may  be  about  voting.  One  perceives  a  general  in- 
terest in  active  self-govemmeni  The  difference  be- 
tween the  political  atmosphere  in  this  respect  and 
that  of  England,  for  example,  is  very  noticeable  to 
an  American  sense,  and,  so  far  as  its  influence 
operates,  makes  an  American  feel  far  more  at  home 
than  in  English  society,  where  the  political  talk  is 
almost  exclusively  sentimental  and  apt  to  be  con- 
fined to  the  personal  character  of  Mr.  Gladstone, 
and  the  national  traits  of  the  Irish.     The  press  is  as 


DEMOCRACY  325 

fundamentally  democratic  as  the  English  press  is 
fundamentally  contemptuous  of  popular  ideas.  It 
is,  moreover,  quite  as  free.  Personal  privacy  is  the 
only  ground  it  may  not  invade.  One  notes  that, 
whereas  English  liberty,  up  to  the  Reform  bills  at 
any  rate,  was  individual  rather  than  popular,  the 
individual  left  to  do  as  he  liked,  even  to  the  point 
of  "  going  to  the  devil  his  own  way,"  with  no  voice 
in  the  control  of  the  society  of  which,  indeed,  it 
was  not  recognized  that  he  formed  a  part  in  the  ab 
sence  of  substantial  titles  to  recognition  ;  and, 
whereas,  even  now,  the  voice  many  individuals  have 
is  practically  a  ludicrously  feeble  one,  and,  to  their 
own  stolid  perceptions,  often  scarce  worth  the  pains 
of  uttering  at  all,  except  for  the  purpose  of  "  saying 
ditto  "  to  their  respective  Mr.  Burkes,  French  liberty, 
as  it  exists  at  present,  works  in  entire  and  eflScient 
harmony  with  the  social  instinct. 

The  French  canaille  itself  enjoys  much  more  con- 
sideration than  does  ours,  and  the  fact  contributes 
powerfully  to  the  democratic  homogeneity  of  society. 
It  is  significant  that,  when  such  a  born  aristocrat  as 
M.  Jules  Simon  has  occasion  to  make  a  contemptu- 
ous allusion  to  the  canaille,  he  feels  compelled  in- 
stantly to  add :  "  Don't  be  alarmed,  I  mean  la 
sainte  canaille."  Certainly  it  would  occur  to  no 
English,  and  I  doubt  if  to  any  American,  publicist 
of  M.  Jules  Simon's  temperament  and  convictions, 
to  apologize  sarcastically  for  calling  the  canaille  the 
canaille.     And  the  reason  is  that  in  France  the 


326  FRENCH   TRAITS 

canaille  has,  in  common  with  every  other  class  of 
society,  received  the  advantages  of  long  evolutionary 
diflferentiation,  so  that  it  has  of  necessity  developed 
the  qualities  which  create  companionability.  Its 
coarseness  and  grossness  are  accordingly  not  shock- 
ing, whereas,  with  us,  the  grossness  and  coarseness 
are  so  great  as  to  mislead  us  into  a  most  unchristian 
contempt  for  those  who  show  them,  and  cause  us  to 
imagine  that  what  is  really  ignorance  of  the  essential 
moral  and  spiritual  similarity  of  people,  is  a  witness 
of  a  refined  nervous  organization.  The  French- 
man's nerves  not  being  thus  exasperated,  do  not 
thus  lead  him  to  mistake  snobbishness  for  sensitive- 
ness. And  being  in  this  way,  and  for  this  reason, 
less  contemned,  even  the  canaille  in  France  becomes 
inevitably  less  contemptible  than  the  canaille  else- 
where. Being — for  cause — better  liked,  it  becomes 
in  turn  more  likable.  It  is  intelligent  and  con- 
scious, and  aUve  to  its  own  interests.  It  has  to 
be  reckoned  with  politically.  It  counts  as  a  force. 
It  is  not  merely  intractable  and  tui'bulent.  It  at- 
tempts, at  least,  to  give  its  rioting  an  air  of  revolu- 
tionary intention.  It  has  even  then  a  distinctly 
political  motive,  and  the  idea  of  expending  its  force 
in  mere  wanton  raarau  ling,  after  the  Ti'afalgar  Square 
order,  would  seem  absurd  to  it.  Its  demonstrations, 
at  tlieir  worst,  nre  directed  against  what  it  believes 
a  t\Tanniciil  government ;  those  who  tfike  part  in 
them  talk  about  capturing  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  or 
marching   on    the   Palais   Bourbon  ;    they   do  not 


DEMOCRACY  327 

smash  club  windows,  and  attack  casual  pedestrians, 
and  loot  shops.  In  brief,  the  canaille  is  serious. 
It  is  very  likely  more  dangerous  for  this  reason  to 
the  estabUshed  order,  but  it  certainly  is  a  more 
healthful  social  element,  from  the  democratic  point 
of  view,  than  is  either  the  supine  and  submissive 
understratum  of  German,  or  the  "brutalized  lower 
class  "  of  English,  civilization. 

The  attitude  toward  it,  therefore,  of  that  part  of 
the  community  whose  property  and  position  give  it 
contrary  interests,  is  correspondingly  different  from 
the  attitude  of  the  upper  classes  elsewhere.  Else- 
where the  upper  classes'  endeavor  is  to  keep  it  down. 
In  France  the  analogous  endeavor  is  better  de- 
scribed, in  vulgar  phrase,  as  an  attempt  to  keep  it 
off.  In  France  property  and  position  are  simply 
engaged  in  the  attempt  to  hold  their  own  amid  the 
social  warfare  of  clashing  interests,  according  to 
the  laws  of  the  struggle  for  existence.  They  are 
not  seeking  to  impose  themselves  on  the  less  for- 
tunate and  less  powerful.  They  merely  sustain 
their  cause,  their  side,  in  the  general  democratic 
parHament.  Permanent  domination  is  a  dream 
they  certainly  have  not  cherished  since  the  abdi- 
cation of  Charles  X.  But  what  is  still  more  impor- 
tant to  note  is  that  these  extremes  apart — the  in- 
heritors of  the  old  aristocratic  tradition  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  canaille,  so  called,  on  the  other — the 
rest  of  the  nation  explicitly  objects  to  a  warfare  of 
opposing  interests,  and  cherishes  the  ideal  of  serving 


328  FRENCH  TRAITS 

tlie  interests  of  the  entire  people  as  a  people.  "Le 
Temps,"  for  example,  is  never  tired  of  preaching  this 
doctrine.  The  burden  of  its  daily  message  is  that 
it  is  unpatriotic  to  legislate  in  favor  of  any  class, 
even  of  the  least  privileged  ;  that  to  be  a  truly  popu- 
lar government  the  Republic  should  avoid  espousing 
the  cause  of  the  poor  against  the  rich  as  strictly  as 
that  of  the  rich  against  the  poor  ;  that  every  class  of 
the  community  has  its  right  to  equal  consideration, 
and  that  the  rule  of  the  masses  for  the  masses  is  as 
illogical  republicanism  as  that  of  the  classes  for  the 
classes  would  be.  This  is  a  lesson  which  "Le 
Soleil  "  on  the  one  hand,  and  "  L'Intransigeant "  on 
the  other,  no  doubt  find  it  hard  to  learn  ;  but  save  in 
America,  certainly  nowhere  else  is  it  preached  with 
the  same  general  acceptance,  and  nowhere  else  is  its 
practice  so  well  secured  by  thoroughly  positive  as 
well  as  thoroughly  popular  institutions.  We  have 
an  immense  advantage  from  the  democratic  stand- 
point in  having  no  classes  in  the  European  sense,  and 
of  a  constant  and  easy  passing  from  one  into  the 
other  of  the  two  we  do  have.  So  far  as  classes, 
therefore,  are  concerned  we  are  more  homogeneous, 
taken  in  the  mass,  and  politically  considered,  than 
any  other  people  in  the  world  ;  it  is  as  individuals 
that  we  illustrate  such  prodigious  differences.  With, 
therefore,  a  comparative  identity  of  interest,  it  is 
comparatively  easy  for  everyone  to  mean  by  "the 
people  "  the  whole  people,  rather  than  the  peasant, 
the  ouvrier  or  the  Tiers  Etat  even.     How  long  this 


DEMOCRACY  329 

will  last  with  us  is,  of  course,  problematical.  The 
wise  words  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  first  annual  message  : 
"  There  is  no  such  relation  between  capital  and  la- 
bor as  assumed,  nor  is  there  any  such  thing  as  a 
free  man  being  fixed  for  life  in  the  condition  of  ^ 
hired  laborer.  .  .  .  The  prudent,  penniless  be- 
ginner in  the  world  labors  for  wages  for  a  while,  saves 
a  surplus  with  which  to  buy  tools  or  land  for  himself, 
then  labors  on  his  own  account  another  while,  and 
at  length  hires  another  new  beginner  to  help  him  " 
— these  words  are  or  were  applicable  to  us,  and  are 
little  applicable  anywhere  else.  To  be  exact,  they 
should  have  read  "  the  prudent,  penniless  beginner 
in  America,"  not  "in  the  world."  In  the  world  in 
general  the  relation  between  labor  and  capital  is 
much  more  fixed.  And,  as  I  have  already  observed, 
social  differences  among  us  are  crystallizing  and  in- 
creasing, and  social  differences  mean  vei*y  quickly  a 
changed  pohtical  atmosphere.  But  should  our  plu- 
tocracy establish  itself,  and  the  lines  between  such 
classes  as  we  have  become  in  consequence  more 
closely  drawn  and  less  passable,  we  should  be  very 
fortunate,  so  far  as  the  preservation  of  the  democratic 
spirit  is  concerned,  if  our  well-to-do  and  our  poor, 
our  educated  and  our  ignorant,  classes  had  the  same 
mutual  respect  and  tolerance  which  exist  in  France 
between  the  upper,  middle,  and  lower  classes.  For 
in  France,  these  classes  are  cemented  by  the  social 
instinct  and  the  democratic  spirit  into  a  whole, 
which,  if  not  possessed  of  identical  interests,  is,  at 


330  FRENCH   TRAITS 

least,  composed  of  harmoniously  balanced  and  equal 
ly  recognized  constituent  elements.  There  is  a  cer« 
tain  advantage,  indeed,  in  the  comparative  perma- 
nence of  the  class  situation  in  France.  The  ouvrier 
who  is  always  to  be  an  ouvrier,  the  bourgeois  or  the 
peasant  who  is  always  to  remain  such,  as  his  fathers 
did  before  and  as  his  son  will  after  him,  is  the  more 
interested  in  maintaining  his  dignity  and  asserting 
his  importance  as  ouvrier,  bourgeois,  or  peasant ; 
whence  a  manifest  equilibrium  in  the  regulation  of 
a  society  composed  of  necessarily  unequal  classes, 
by  the  elastic  compensating  force  of  democratic 
feeling.  Personally'  the  ouvrier  is  likely  to  count 
les.s,  of  course,  than  where,  as  still  with  us,  he  may 
hope  to  become  a  patron.  But  as  a  class  he  counts 
more  ;  and  as  a  class  our  ouvriers  are,  as  I  said,  rap- 
idly tending  to  become  a  class  dangerously  with- 
out class  self-respect — a  class  composed  rather  of 
envious  individuals  soured  by  the  loss  of  that  op- 
portunity which  in  a  simpler  situation  their  sires  pos- 
sessed. We  shall  then  have  IMr.  Gladstone's  dem- 
ocracy with  its  cry  of  "  the  classes  vs.  the  masses" — a 
motto  subscribed  to  at  present  neither  by  the  French 
nor  ourselves.  Clas.s,  in  France  no  more  than  in 
America,  implies  caste. 

One  hears  a  good  deal  about  the  French  govern- 
ment not  being  really  a  republic,  about  its  being  as 
autocratic  and  as  fond  of  tyrannical  traditions  as  a 
monarchy  could  be.  But  it  must  be  admitted  that 
the   reasons   assisrued    for   this   conviction   seem  a 


DEMOCRACY  331 

little  literal.  Of  course,  if  to  have  a  large  party 
within  your  borders  which  is  opposed  to  a  republi- 
can form  of  government  is,  ipso  facto,  to  be  "  a  re- 
public only  in  name,"  the  French  Republic  is  open 
to  that  reproach.  But  this  very  circumstance  is  a 
sufficient  justification  for  a  good  deal  of  the  so-called 
arbitrariness  of  the  Republic's  action  of  recent  years. 
Only  a  pedant  would  be  embarrassed  by  the  logic 
of  the  late  Louis  Veuillot,  who  remarked  in  defence 
of  ultramontanism,  "When  you  are  in  power  we  de- 
mand tolerance,  because  it  is  your  principle  ;  when 
we  are  in  power  we  refuse  it,  because  it  is  not  ours." 
It  is  no  party's  principle  to  the  extent  of  tolerating 
what  would,  if  tolerated,  do  its  utmost  to  compass 
the  desti'uction  of  tolerance.  The  republican  creed, 
however  superficially  inconsistent  it  may  seem,  must 
in  its  first  article  require  subscription  to  the  repub- 
lican form  as  the  necessaiy  basis  of  toleration,  of  lib- 
erty. A  great  deal  of  criticism  of  the  Republic's 
action  in  removing  the  Orleanist  princes  from  their 
positions  in  the  army,  and  in  expelling  pretenders, 
found  its  way  at  the  time  into  the  American  and 
English  press.  But  no  country  in  the  world  would 
for  a  moment  tolerate  an  analogous  formal  and 
avowed  consi^iracy  within  its  borders.  Does  any- 
one suppose  that  if  Lord  Wolseley  should  declare 
his  preference  for  a  republic,  and  should  devote  him- 
self to  a  propagaudism  iu  the  British,  equivalent  to 
that  of  the  Orleans  princes  some  years  ago  in  the 
French,  army,  he  would  remain  a  day  in  the  royal 


332  FRENCH  TRAITS 

service  ?  Why,  because  a  republic  is  professedly 
more  tolerant  than  any  other  form  of  government, 
it  should  therefore  be  the  less,  rather  than  the  more, 
entitled  to  regard  self-preservation  as  its  first  law, 
is  a  mystery.  It  is,  moreover,  a  mystery  we  should 
find  it  more  difficult  to  explain  now  than  we  might 
have  done  before  the  trials  of  the  German,  Polish, 
and  English  anarchists  in  Chicago,  and  of  their 
truculent  and  ridiculous  spokesman.  Most,  in  New 
York.  But,  it  is  said,  we  are  distinguished  for  our 
wise  and  sober  capacity  to  wait  for  the  "  overt  act," 
before  we  punish  its  incitement.  Tliis  is  no  longer 
quite  true  ;  but,  aside  fi'om  the  ridiculousness  of 
such  delay  when  the  "  overt  act "  has  been  shown 
by  experience  to  be  certain  to  follow  its  incitement, 
it  really  behooves  us  to  acknowledge  that  recent 
events  have  shown  our  disposition  to  go  quite  as  far 
in  the  way  of  repression  as  the  French  Republic 
does,  if  we  had  the  same  temptation,  rather  than  to 
dwell  complacently  on  our  superior  republican  con- 
sistency. Really,  the  dififereuce  between  ourselves 
and  the  French  here  is  only  that  which  proceeds 
from  the  excess  of  their  state  action  over  ours.  And 
wliat  is  really  extraordinary  in  the  case  of  the  pres- 
ent Republic  is,  that  the  logic  of  republican  tol- 
erance has  so  completely  counteracted  the  tenden- 
cy to  tyranny  springing  naturally  from  excessive 
state  action.  The  tyranny  of  the  government  has 
in  no  instance,  I  imagine,  exceeded,  if  indeed  it 
has  equalled,  the  party  tyranny  which  our  present 


DEMOCRACY  333 

tariff  and  our  theory  of  a  civil  service  produce 
among  us. 

The  danger  of  democracy  is  always  despotism,  it 
is  true  ;  but  it  should  always  be  borne  in  mind  that 
this  despotism  means  popular,  not  at  all  oriental, 
despotism,  as  pessimists  presume.  Universal  suf- 
frage gets  impatient  with  parliamentarism  whenever 
any  political  shoe  really  pinches,  and  wishes  to  as- 
sert itself  directly.  We  have  ourselves  passed 
through  at  least  one  such  peril,  since  Hamilton's 
hope  of  a  limited  monarchy  to  succeed  our  initial 
republican  institutions  perished  at  the  hands  of 
practical  pioneer  good  sense.  I  mean,  of  course, 
the  third  term  movement  in  favor  of  that  one  of  our 
presidents  who  was  most  conspicuously  a  civic  fail- 
ure. Democracy  has  precisely  this  practical  peril. 
Publicists  who  are  especially  terrified  at  it  do  well 
not  to  be  democrats.  And  France  has  seemed  often 
to  "  need  a  strong  hand  to  govern  her,"  as  political 
sciolists  are  so  fond  of  saying,  only  because  she  has, 
since  the  Eevolution,  at  all  events,  been  so  deter- 
minedly and  persistently  democratic.  The  demo- 
cratic instinct  is  in  France  too  imperative  and  too 
irreflective  to  consider  consequences  when  any  un- 
popular r^ime  is  in  power — to  consider  the  re- 
sults of  confounding  nominal  distinctions,  such  as 
Democratic  Republic,  Constitutional  Monarchy, 
Party  Government,  etc. 

When  Morris  and  others,  during  the  Eevolu- 
tion, prophesied  that  the  first  Republic  would  end  in 


334  FRENCH  TRAITS 

a  despotism,  they  were  arguing  from  historical  pre- 
cedent, and  prophesying  an  altogether  different  kind 
of  despotism  from  that  of  Napoleon.  It  is  amusing 
to  note  the  complacency  with  which  these  prophets 
speak  afterward  of  the  fulfilment  of  their  predictions 
in  this  regard.  What  they  reaUy  predicted  was  the 
rise  of  an  autocrat  like  the  Russian  Czar,  or  the  Ro- 
man Emperors — of  such  a  tyrant  as  Napoleon  was 
contemporarily  believed  to  be  in  England,  where 
nurses  used  his  name  to  frighten  children  with ; 
whereas,  of  course,  instead  of  being  essentially  reac- 
tionary. Napoleon  was  in  many  ways  what  he  called 
himself,  and  what  the  national  temper  compelled  him 
to  be,  "the  incarnation  of  the  Revolution,"  and  Em- 
erson's representative  democrat.  The  despot  Morris 
foretold  would  hardly  have  denounced  England  as  an 
oligarchy.  Nor,  in  spite  of  his  Corsican  vulgarity, 
which  made  him  do  so  much  grosso  modo,  did  he  at- 
tempt the  r6le  of  Augustus — who  passes  with  many 
of  our  pohtical  philosophers  now-a-days  for  a  kind 
of  excellent  and  worthy  constitutional  monarch — 
and  endeavor  to  realize  in  any  completeness  the 
panem  et  circenses  ideal  of  government.  And  when 
we  wonder  at  the  resignation  with  which  France  ac- 
cepted the  co^lp  d'etat  of  1851,  we  forget  that  it 
was  in  some  sense  a  popular  move  ;  that  it  appealed 
to  the  people  for  its  justification,  and  that  at  all 
events  it  was  the  overthrow  of  the  reactionary, 
which  had  succeeded  a  \isionary,  Chamber.  More- 
over, the  plebiscites  of  the  latter  part  of  Napoleon 


DEMOCRACY  335 

HL's  reign  were  so  one-sided  not  so  much  because 
the  voters  were  terrorized  and  corrupted  as  because, 
in  the  first  place,  the  regime  was  extremely  demo- 
cratic in  almost  every  respect  except  that  of  admin- 
istrative centralization,  and  because,  in  the  second 
place  (and  this  is  too  often  lost  sight  of),  there  was 
nothing  positive  and  definite  for  those  who  did  not 
wish  to  vote  "yes  "  to  vote  for  ;  voting  "no,"  under 
the  circumstances,  was  like  voting  in  the  air.  In 
other  words,  the  regime  was  less  tyrannical,  and 
France  less  inert  and  ductile,  than  is  usually  as- 
sumed to  have  been  the  case. 

One  of  the  commonest  of  errors  is  to  confuse 
state  action  with  centralization.  The  two  are  suffi- 
ciently distinct,  however  practically  they  may  be 
related  and  reciprocally  imply  each  other.  It  is  a 
commonplace  that  state  action — which  is  another 
name  for  authoritative  government — is,  as  a  social 
principle,  a  question  of  degree.  Matthew  Ai'nold 
— whose  political  and  social  observations  will  cer- 
tainly some  day  obtain  the  recognition  hitherto  de- 
nied them  by  our  Anglo-Saxon  inability  to  conceive 
of  sound  social  and  political  criticism  as  emanating 
from  the  Nazareth  of  mere  culture — has  very  well 
expressed  the  gist  of  the  matter  in  his  remark  : 
"  Some  things  the  state  had  better  leave  alone,  others 
it  had  better  not."  Even  in  America  we  acknowledge 
the  efficacy  of  police.  And  we  are  beginning  to 
speculate  as  to  whether  railroads  and  telegraph  lines 
would   not  be   better  managed   on   the   principle 


336  FRENCH  TRAITS 

which  governs  postal  arrangements  than  if  left  in 
their  present  oppressive  anarchy.  We  are,  in  fact^ 
approaching  a  stage  of  development  which  makes  it 
possible  for  us  to  recognize  that  the  principle  of 
state  action  has  something  to  say  for  itself.  The 
late  Mr.  Washburne,  Minister  to  France  in  1870-71, 
mentions  in  his  "  Recollections  "  that  Napoleon  ILL 
expressed  to  him — and  one  can  easily  fancy  the 
solemnity  with  which  that  potentate  made  the  con- 
fession— "his  regret  that  the  French  people  were 
not  better  fitted  for  more  liberal  institutions,  and 
for  the  concessions  he  desired  to  make  to  them. 
The  great  trouble  with  the  French,  he  said,  was 
that  they  always  looked  to  the  government  for 
everything,  instead  of  depending  upon  themselves." 
Our  philanthropists  who  are  anxious  to  reduce  the 
Treasury  surplus  by  preventing  the  people  of  the 
Southern  States  from  depending  upon  themselves 
for  popular  education,  would  doubtless  object  to 
the  Emperor's  implication  here  ;  but  most  Ameri- 
cans, probably,  would  be  only  too  ready  to  admit 
the  demoralizing  eflfects  of  state  action  on  the  initi- 
ative and  self-respect  of  a  democracy.  And  we  may 
be  very  right  in  the  main  and  still,  so  far  as  purely 
independent  criticism  is  concerned,  err  in  looking 
too  exclusively  at  one  side  of  the  shield  of  state  ac- 
tion, especially  as  regards  its  working  in  France. 
Napoleon  HE.  was  certainly  very  right,  as  well  as 
very  courteous,  in  uttering  hii  commonplace  ;  but 
at  the  same  time  it  might  have  been  replied  to  him, 


DEMOCRACY  337 

in  the  first  place,  that  one  reason  for  the  French 
being  "  unfitted  for  more  liberal  institutions  "  was 
their  necessity  for  an  army,  and  the  use  to  which  an 
army  could  be  put  by  unscrupulous  usurpers  in  de- 
priving them  of  such  Liberal  institutions  as  they 
ivere  fitted  for  ;  and,  secondly,  that  there  is  no  real 
contradiction  between  fitness  for  liberal  institutions 
and  the  habit  of  "  looking  to  the  government "  for 
many  things  which  "  the  government "  can  best 
compass  and  supply. 

The  fact  is  that  we  are  as  likely  to  underestimate 
the  salutary  efficiency  of  official  action  as  the  French 
are  that  of  private  enterprise  ;  government,  of  course, 
is  a  constant  quantity  and,  as  has  often  been  sug- 
gested, there  is  as  much  of  it,  on  the  hither  side  of 
anarchy,  when  it  is  hap-hazard  and  irresponsible  as 
when  it  is  organized.  From  the  democratic  point 
of  view,  one  of  the  best  eflects  of  state  action  in  a 
society  hampered,  like  that  of  France,  by  the  re- 
mains of  feudalism,  is  the  abolition  of  privilege  by 
law.  The  relations  between  absence  of  state  action 
and  privilege  are  closer  and  more  direct  than  we 
imagine.  In  England,  for  example,  where  the  privi- 
leges of  the  privileged  classes  form  a  part  of  that 
Constitution  so  greatly  extolled  as  a  growth  and 
not  a  device,  minute  state  regulations,  codes,  etc., 
are  easily  dispensed  with,  because  the  strong  can 
readily  get  along  without  them,  and  because  only 
the  strong  are  accounted  worthy—  and  by  a  nat- 
ural consequence  alone  are  so  in  reality,  perhaps 
23 


338  FRKNCH   TRAITS 

With  U8  opportunity  has  hitherto  rendered  privi- 
lege less  important  than  it  is  anywhere  else  ;  but 
where  competition  is  at  all  close,  privilege — which 
is  no  more  an  artificial  product  than  original  sin — 
flourishes  with  a  luxuriance  as  natural  and  logical 
as  it  is  excessive.  In  France,  where  such  opportu- 
nity as  ours  is  necessarily  lacking,  the  democratic 
instinct  requires  that  its  absence  be  supplied  in  a 
thousand  ways  and  details  by  law,  by  regulations, 
by  a  minute  explicitness  of  administration.  The 
fact  that  in  France  it  costs  a  tenant  three  cents  to 
drive  a  defacing  nail  into  a  landlord's  wood-work  is, 
it  is  easy  to  see,  a  democratic  provision  in  a  highly 
organized  society  where  nail-driving  is  important. 
What  is  liberty,  exclaims  ^L  Scherer,  but  a  regula- 
tion and  adjustment  of  warring  interests.  Tenny- 
son would  reply  that  it  is  a  result  arrived  at  merely 
by  permitting  a  man  to  "  speak  the  thing  he  will." 
But  this  is,  if  not  fustian,  clearly  elementary  ;  and  so 
are  statements  of  ours  like  :  "  The  measure  of  every 
man's  rights  is  another's  wrongs."  What  is  gained 
from  the  social  and  democratic  point  of  view  if,  in  the 
former  case,  social  tyranny  (which  is  really  a  polit- 
ical result)  is  so  exaggerated  as  to  make  political  lib- 
erty (which  is  really  a  political  agent)  futile ;  and  if, 
in  the  latter,  a  man's  rights  receive  a  merely  nega- 
tive authorization  for  exercise  in  vacuo,  so  to  speak, 
or  else  another's  wrongs  are  measured  by  tradition- 
ary standards  which  fail  to  note  the  degree  of  wrong 
apparent  to  the  instinctive  sense  of  reason  and  jus- 


DEMOCRACY  339 

tice  ?  In  spite  of  these  commonplaces,  we  are 
obliged  to  acknowledge  that,  however  good  political 
economy  the  principle  of  laisserfaire  may  be,  in  the 
matter  of  political  and  social  organization  it  is  a 
principle  very  speedily  transformed  into  the  princi- 
ple of  laisser  aller.  And  in  a  democracy  like  that 
of  France  which  is  not  rendered  elastic  by  opportu- 
nity this  means  anarchy.  Where  an  active  and  in- 
telligent proletariat  is  comparatively  permanent  on 
the  one  hand,  and  takes  the  place  of  a  "  brutalized 
lower  class "  on  the  other,  the  feeling  that  society 
needs  protection  against  the  individual  rather  than 
the  converse  is  quickly  developed.  The  proletariat 
comes  quickly  to  share  it,  and  tends  in  consequence 
to  socialism.  The  feeling  is  can-ied  so  far  in  France 
that  it  sometimes  seems,  for  example,  as  if  French 
jurisprudence  itself  contemplated  the  punishment  of 
the  innocent  with  more  resignation  than  the  escape 
of  the  guilty.  And  even  in  this  excess  it  is  not  an 
autocratic,  but  a  democratic,  feeling.  The  sense 
that  you  are  protected  is  much  greater  in  France 
than  either  in  England  or  among  ourselves. 

Centralization  is  so  much  another  thing  that  one 
may  indeed  ascribe  to  it,  rather  than  to  authorita- 
tive and  elaborate  state  action,  the  lack  of  individual 
initiative  and  dependence  on  one's  self  which  so 
deeply  distressed  Napoleon  HI.  in  the  French. 
When  elaborate  state  action  is  democratic  rather 
than  paternal,  when  it  means  simply  systematic  at- 
tention to  social  administrative  needs ;  when,  that 


340  FRENCH  TRAITS 

is  to  say,  it  is  not  Prussian,  but  French,  it  tends,  per- 
haps  we  may  say,  to  develop  rather  than  counteract 
individual  activities  of  a  high,  by  preventing  the  ne- 
cessity for  those  of  a  low,  order.  For  example,  a 
man  who  is  restrained  by  "  officialism  "  from  jump- 
ing for  ferry-boats,  or  crossing  railway-tracks  in 
front  of  coming  trains,  can  release  for  more  positive 
uses  some  of  the  alertness  he  would  otherwise  be 
forced  to  keep  under  tension  to  the  mere  end  of 
continued  existence.  However,  the  privilege  of 
looking  out  for  one's  self  in  all  such  instances — and 
they  are  more  numerous  and  varied  than  we  are  apt 
to  remember — forms  so  precious  a  part  of  an  Amer- 
ican's personal  liberty,  that  it  would  very  likely  be 
unwise  to  insist  on  this  point.  As  to  the  effect  of 
centralization  on  individual  initiative,  there  can,  I 
think,  at  any  rate,  be  no  doubt.  Its  warmest  advo- 
cates agree  in  this  with  its  severest  critics.  Even 
under  democratic  auspices,  and  when  it  is  of  the 
most  loyally  representative  character,  it  means  in- 
evitably government  "  for  "  but  not  "  by"  the  people, 
and  its  liability  to  abuse  is  self-evident.  It  is  advo- 
cated by  French  democrats  mainly  because  "  it  is  a 
condition  and  not  a  theory  "  that  confronts  them,  to 
quote  the  admirable  expression  of  President  Cleve- 
land. The  cardinal  necessity  for  France,  in  view  of 
this  condition,  is  to  be  strong.  It  is  as  true  now  as 
it  was  during  the  Revolution — not  as  true  material- 
ly, but  as  true  morally — that,  as  Gouverneur  Morris 
said,  "  France  has  an  enemy  in  every  prince."    It  is 


DEMOORAOT  341 

this  enmity — betrayed  every  week  in  the  Liberal 
London  "  Spectator,"  even,  which  long  ago  wrote  a 
famous  article  entitled  "The  Fall  of  the  French  Re- 
public " — that  makes  it  necessary  for  France,  so  far 
as  her  attitude  toward  Europe  is  concerned,  to  be  a 
unit  and  a  powerful  one.  This  was  the  reason  why 
Gambetta  permitted  the  first  serious  breach  in  the 
Republican  ranks,  and  suffered  the  schism  of  the  Cle- 
menceau  Radicals.  He  contested  M.  Clemenceau's 
statesman-like  contention  that  the  time  had  come  to 
consider  internal  politics,  and  that  decentralization 
within  certain  limits  would  immensely  stimulate,  in 
modern  France,  the  moral  qualities  which  built  the 
cathedrals  and  made  the  communes  of  the  Middle 
Ages  what  they  were.  He  believed  that  centraliza- 
tion alone  could  so  weld  together  politically  the  var- 
ious peoples  that  compose  the  French  nation — the 
Norman  with  the  Gascon,  the  Breton  with  the  Tour- 
angeau,  the  Proven9al  with  the  Lorrain — as  to  keep 
the  traditional  French  position  in  Europe,  menaced 
as  this  was  by  the  anti-democratic  European  forces 
marshalled  against  it,  from  the  reactionary  hostiHty 
of  united  Germany  to  the  traditional  Tory  distrust 
of  Great  Britain.  We  may  be  pleased  that  his  resi- 
dence in  the  United  States,  perhaps,  confirmed  M. 
Clemenceau  in  his  radical  belief  in  the  panacea  of 
local  self-government,  without  presuming  to  decide 
between  two  such  political  philosophers  and  prac- 
tical statesmen  as  Gambetta  and  himself.  And  we 
may  wish  that  the  condition  of  Europe — aggravated 


842  FRENCH   TRAITS 

by  the  barbarous  seton  which  Prince  Bismarck,  in 
taking  from  France  her  eastern  frontier,  inserted  in 
the  European  flank — did  not  so  terribly  complicate 
the  problem  of  French  internal  progress,  without 
failing  to  recognize  that  if  centrahzation  has  marred 
the  welfare,  it  has  largely  achieved  the  greatness,  of 
that  France  which  finds  it  impossible  to  conceive  of 
welfare  apart  from  greatness.  But  we  may  be  sure,  at 
all  events,  that  decentralization  would  not  mean  aban- 
donment of  state  action  in  France,  and  that  local, 
would  not  imply  individual,  self-government  there. 

In  a  very  noteworthy  passage  of  what  are  curiously 
called  his  theological  writings,  Matthew  Arnold  char- 
acterizes France  as  a  brilliant  and  attractive  Ishmael, 
and  exclaims  in  his  happiest  scriptural  vein  :  "  How 
often  for  France  has  gone  up  the  cry,  '  Oh  that  Ish- 
mael might  live  before  the  Lord,' "  maintaining  that 
just  at  the  moment  when  the  French  Ishmael  seems 
succeeding  he  breaks  down  notably,  and  the  homely 
Isaac  gets  the  succession.  I  dare  say  this  is  so,  with 
certain  reservations.  But  what  must  strike  one  most 
in  the  history  of  this  brilliant  Ishmael  is  his  prodig- 
ious success,  and  not  his  breakings  down  at  alL 
Even  his  occasional  utter  collapses  such  as  I  sup- 
pose Mr.  Arnold  considered  the  disasters  of  Louis 
XrV.'s  later  days,  of  1815,  of  L'annee  terrible,  fail, 
I  think,  to  impress  the  imagination  as  >'ividly  as 
his  astonishing  recuperative  power  ;  and,  indeed, 
the  most  terrible  of  his  "  disasters  "  seems  hardly 


DEMOCRACY  343 

to  outweigh  the  corresponding  benefit  accompany- 
ing or  soon  succeeding  it.  So  that  the  average  of 
success  resulting  from  Ishmael's  amazing  activity 
seems  still  high.  What  experiences  he  has  of  sick- 
ness and  health,  of  heroic  treatment  for  obstinate 
ills,  of  long  periods  of  vigorous  activity,  of  extremes 
of  all  sorts,  of  sensations  of  all  kinds  !  Beside  his 
varied  and  full  existence,  the  peaceful  and  placid 
hibernation  of  "  the  homely  Isaac  "  across  the  Chan- 
nel, dreaming  of  the  victory  of  the  hedgehog  over 
the  hare,  presents  certainly  a  less  striking  object 
to  the  imagination.  But  Ishmael's  admitted  suc- 
cess so  far  predominates  over  his  failures  and  his 
"  breakings  down ! "  I  am  perfectly  willing  to  agree 
with  Mr.  Arnold  that  "  a  little  more  Biblism  would 
do  him  no  harm."  But  how  he  triumphs  over  this 
lack,  I  say,  is  the  striking  thing  about  him,  and  the 
explanation  of  his  doing  so  is  one  of  the  most  inter- 
esting facts  in  connection  with  him.  If,  in  spite  of 
his  lack  of  Biblism,  he  is  so  successful,  it  must  be 
either  that  we  overestimate  the  importance  of  Bib- 
lism, or  else  that  his  inslihitions  are  particularly 
adapted  to  bring  him  success.  Either  character 
counts  less  than  ordinarily  we  think  it  does,  or  in- 
stitutions count  more. 

And  if  we  examine  into  the  matter  closely  we 
shall  find  that  just  in  so  far  as  institutions  affect  a 
people,  the  French  are  eminently  successful,  and 
that  just  in  those  qualities  which  no  institutions 
can  touch  in  people  to  affect  them  in  any  way,  the 


344  FRENCH  TRAITS 

French  fail  Institutions  may  be  taken  by  exten- 
sion to  mean  all  the  formulated  instincts  which  the 
people  of  a  nation  possess  in  common.  They  have 
a  great,  a  prodigious,  direct  effect  in  determining  the 
national  expression,  the  national  character.  They 
have  only  an  indirect  association  with  individual 
character  and  expression.  Hence  we  find  the  French 
nationally  very  strong,  very  conspicuously  successfuL 
In  individual  character  the  homely  Isaac  may  have 
charms  for  us  of  an  enduring  attractiveness,  to  which 
no  Ishmaelite  brilliancy  and  vivacity  can  pretend. 
But  to  anyone  who  has  really  seen  their  working,  any 
doubt  of  the  essential  wisdom  of  French  institutions, 
or  any  query  as  to  whether  the  national  expression 
which  they  embody  is  not  far  in  advance  of  any  na- 
tional expression  elsewhere  illustrated  in  Europe,  is 
impossible.  From  nearly  every  point  of  view,  cer- 
tainly, France  strikes  an  American  sense  as  success- 
ful. There  is  by  general  admission  more  happiness 
enjoyed  by  more  people  in  France  than  in  any  other 
European  country.  Well-being  is  more  evenly  dis- 
tributed there.  Henry  IV.'s  measure  of  national 
success,  namely,  a  fowl  in  every  man's  pot,  is  more 
nearly  attained  there  than  anywhere  else.  In  France 
there  is  nothing  analogous  to  the  famous  East  End 
of  London  ;  even  Paris  has  no  "  slums."  The  people, 
from  top  to  bottom,  is  far  more  perfectly  humanized 
than  elsewhere.  Equality  has  been  such  a  practical 
educator  for  them  that  even  the  ignorant  have  at- 
tained that  intelligence  which  is  the  end  of  formal 


DEMOCRACY  345 

education  in  greater  measure  than  the  coiTespond- 
ing  classes  of  the  most  highly  educated  portions 
of  Prussia  itself.  Fewer  emigrants  leave  the  most 
overcrowded  regions,  and  these  almost  never  with- 
out hope  of  return.  The  attraction  France  has  for 
Frenchmen  is  something  of  which  we  can  form  no 
adequate  notion.  Everything  French  suits  exactly 
evei'y  Frenchman.  Life  is  a  larger  thin^  or,  at  any 
rate,  people  in  general  are  more  alive — not  nervously 
and  feverishly,  as  we  are  apt  to  fancy  from  the  nov- 
els, but  freely  and  expansively.  As  to  French  liter- 
ature, art,  and  science,  the  elegant  side  of  social  life, 
the  characteristics  which  go  to  make  a  nation  ad- 
mired and  envied  abroad,  there  is  clearly  no  need  to 
insist  on  this  element  of  the  contemporary  success 
of  France.  She  is  no  longer  la  grande  nation  to  any 
but  her  own  citizens,  but  that  is  not  because  she  has 
diminished,  as  one  is  constantly  hearing  from  super- 
ficial foreign  critics  as  well  as  from  French  fatuity 
itself,  but  because  her  preponderance  has  disap- 
peared with  the  rise  in  the  modern  world  of  other 
nations.  She  has  herself  contributed  so  much  to 
this  result  that  she  can  hardly  realize  that  it  has  act- 
ually taken  place.  But  because  there  are  now  a 
united  Germany,  and  a  united  Italy,  and  the  United 
States  of  America  in  the  world,  and  a  Radical  party 
in  England,  and  so  on,  it  is  only  a  frivolous  notion 
to  suppose  that  France  has  stood  still  any  more  than 
ever  these  last  fifteen  years  in  national  development, 
or  has  become  internationally  a  figure  of  any  less 


346  FRENCH  TRAITS 

real  and  serious  attractiveness  and  importance.  She 
is  no  longer  the  arbiter  of  Europe,  but  that  was  a  fac- 
titious success  which  was  in  many  ways  a  drawback 
to  her  real  hold  on  foreign  minds;  she  is  much 
more  attractive  to  serious  strangers  when  bearing 
Victor  Hugo  from  the  Arc  de  Triomphe  to  the  Pan- 
theon than  when  confiscating  his  books  at  the  Belgian 
frontier.  Her  internal  development  since  the  Re- 
public has  been  far  greater  than  most  persons  who 
are  strangers  to  any  close  study  of  contemporary 
politics  are  apt  to  suppose  ;  we  all  know  about  M. 
Ferry's  Tonquin  failure,  for  example,  but  very  few 
of  us  know  anything  of  his  work  for  popular  educa- 
tion. 

French  democracy  does  not  practically  date  from 
the  Revolution.  The  Revolution  awakened  it  into 
consciousness,  imbued  it  with  ideality,  saturated  it 
with  sentiment,  and  endued  it  with  efficient  force. 
But  democracy,  in  the  form  of  the  social  instinct  in- 
directly but  powerfully  shaping  political  action,  is 
in  France  nearly  as  old  as  the  nation  itself.  But 
for  it  the  despotism  of  Louis  XIV.  never  would  have 
been  prepared  by  Richelieu  and  Mazarin  ;  but  for 
it  indeed,  Louis  XL  would  never  have  checkmated 
his  vassals.  The  democratic  spirit  sapped  the 
strength  of  the  Fronde  as  surely  as  the  autocratic 
turbulence  of  the  English  barons  won  Magna  Charta 
from  King  John,  who  was  a  tyrant  of  the  Byzantine 
rather  than  the  Greek  order  and  had  no  representa- 
tive character  whatever.     In  estimating:  the  natural 


DEMOCRACY  347 

independence  of  spirit  as  regards  government  ex- 
hibited by  different  peoples,  persistency  in  the  face 
of  discouragement  afifords  as  good  a  measure  of  in- 
tensity, indeed,  as  the  actual  gain  in  specific  liber- 
ties, which  is  more  generally  taken  as  the  standard. 
In  fact,  it  may  be  a  better  measure  of  the  natural 
tendency  toward  independence,  for  success  in 
achieving  liberty  increases  the  love  of  it,  and  so  the 
original  force  which  secures  it  is  increased  by  its 
attainment  in  a  way  almost  to  be  described  as  me- 
chanical. Now,  the  French  in  their  communal  revolts 
of  the  twelfth  century  demanded  for  their  separate 
cities  very  much  the  reforms  which  in  the  Revolu- 
tion they  demanded  for  the  whole  of  France. 
Against  full  success  then  the  nobles  were  arrayed  ; 
against  the  retention  of  what  gains  were  accorded 
by  the  crown  stood  the  lack  of  unity  of  law  and  of  a 
jurisdiction  to  which  all  should  be  alike  subject,  as 
had  been  the  more  favorable  condition  of  England 
from  the  time  of  the  Conquest,  when  the  Conqueror 
brought  the  Norman  talent  for  administration  to 
bear  on  Saxon  anarchy.  A  still  more  hostile  element 
was  the  very  sense  of  solidarity  in  the  people,  a 
sense  greatly  quickened  by  the  influence  of  the 
crown  and  the  church  in  conjunction — the  crown 
working  to  combat  the  disintegrating  and  German 
spirit  of  separatism  and  the  independence  of  the 
nobles,  the  church  contending  against  the  tendency 
to  relapse  into  barbarism  and  the  decay  of  faith. 
This  joint  effort  of  church  and  crown  indeed  is  def- 


348  FRENCH  TRAITS 

initely  traceable  from  the  time  of  CJharlemagne,  and 
in  germ  even  from  the  invasion  of  the  barbarians ; 
and  it  found  its  culmination  under  Louis  XFV.,  when 
the  nobles  were  definitively  conquered  by  the  crown 
and  the  Reformation  by  the  church.  Meantime  the 
French  people,  in  helping  to  overcome  the  nation- 
ally disintegrating  movement  which  the  Kef  ormatioa 
in  effect  was,  erected  the  church  into  a  tyrant  such 
as  it  had  never  been  before,  and  lost  their  civil 
hberties  to  the  crown  before  the  tyrannizing  nobles, 
against  whom  the  crown  was  fighting  their  fight, 
were  entirely  subdued.  The  attachment  to  liberty 
of  a  people  thus  cheated  of  it  by  circumstances  of  a 
fatal  perversity — circumstances  which  but  for  the 
Conqueror's  earlier  and  consequently  less  rigorous 
centralization,  might  have  triumphed  over  English 
energy  as  well — naturally  became  fanatical  in  its 
intensity  when  the  burden  of  despotism  became  at 
once  intolerable  and  absurd.  Nothing  so  well  as 
its  evolution  explains  the  very  extravagances  of  the 
Revolution — the  Utopia  of  '89,  the  Terror  of  '93. 
Only  by  forgetting  their  history  is  it  possible  to  talk 
glibly  of  the  French  as  unfitted  by  nature  for  self- 
government.  And,  indeed,  one  would  think  some- 
times that  the  works  of  Augustin  Thierry,  instead 
of  being  as  accessible  in  English  as  in  French,  had 
never  been  written  at  all 

Nus  sumes  homes  cum  il  sunt  ; 
Tex  membres  avum  cum  il  unt, 


DEMOCRACY  349 

Et  altresi  granz  cors  avum, 

Et  altretaut  sofrir  polim  ; 

Ne  nus  faut  fors  cuer  sulement, 

sings  the  Eoman  de  Rou  in  the  twelfth  century. 
When  the  Declaration  des  Droits  de  I'Homme,  which 
has  the  same  inspiration,  was  written,  the  "cuer" 
was  supplied. 

It  is,  moreover,  important  to  remember  that  when 
we  speak  of  self-government  and  democracy  as 
identical,  and  of  self-government  as  a  peculiarly 
Anglo-Saxon  institution,  we  lose  an  essential  dis- 
tinction in  vagueness.  The  only  sense  in  which 
self-go vernmeut  is  exclusively  Anglo-Saxon,  in  the 
view  of  continental  critics — both  those  who  extol 
and  those  who  distrust  it — is  the  sense  of  private 
rather  than  official  government.  Its  maxims  are 
"  the  state  had  better  leave  things  alone,"  and  "  the 
best  government  is  that  which  governs  least."  But 
manifestly,  when  we  think  of  self-government  as 
government  by  trusts,  corporations,  and  newspapers, 
or  by  what  Professor  Huxley  calls  a  "  beadleocracy," 
the  term  appears  euphemistic.  What  we  really 
mean  by  self-government,  when  we  praise  it  intelli- 
gently, is  either  representative  government  or  else 
local  self-government  —  "home-rule,"  as  we  say. 
Local  self-government  is,  as  every  American  must 
believe,  an  admirable  institution  as  it  works  with 
us  ;  but  clearly  it  has  not  the  universality  of  a  prin- 
ciple, and  if,  when  we  say  that  self-government  is  a 
lofty  ideal,  we  really  mean  that  it  is  a  good  thing 


350  FRENCH  TRAITS 

for  a  village  community  to  elect  its  own  selectmen, 
or  for  a  city  to  be  independent  of  a  State  legislature, 
we  shall  certainly  say  it  with  less  emotion.  Repre- 
sentative government  is  also  a  splendid  piece  of  po- 
litical machinery,  but  in  itself  it  is  machinery.  Nor 
is  it  by  any  means  necessarily  democratic.  Every- 
thing depends  on  the  degree  and  character  of  rep- 
resentation. 

Of  recent  years  especially,  "representative  gov- 
ernment "  has  become  one  of  the  hardest  worked 
elements  of  our  inveterate  Ailglo-Saxon  self-laud- 
ation. GUmmerings  of  it  are  discovered  in  the 
twilight  of  the  Teutonic  genesis,  with  an  assiduity 
curiously  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  it  gains  its 
practical  significance  only  from  its  application 
to  a  Third  Estate  then  in  the  womb  of  time  and 
since  developed  by  the  rise  and  decay  of  feudalism 
with  its  result  of  social  differentiation.  And  yet 
if  the  East  End  of  London  could  read,  it  would 
no  doubt  be  as  proud  of  the  pre-Norman  Witenage- 
mote  as  IVIr.  Freeman.  But  here  again  history 
shows  how  easy  it  is  to  mistake  names  for  things. 
History  shows  that  representative  government 
properly  so-called  has  been  no  more  the  ally  of 
democracy  than  it  has  been  of  national  unity.  It 
was  really  born  in  Europe  in  the  twelfth  and  thir- 
teenth centuries  in  consequence  of  the  great  popu» 
lar  movement  of  the  communes.  The  circumstance 
that  the  Third  Estate  was  first  represented  (for 
special  reasons  and  through  special  causes)  in  Ara- 


DEMOCRACY  351 

gon,  next  in  France,  and  last  of  all  in  England  and 
Germany — the  matter  of  precedence,  that  is  to  say 
— is  comparatively  trivial,  though  the  small  amount 
of  disturbance  it  created  in  France  indicates  how 
slight  was  the  change  there  which  it  involved,  and 
therefore  how  thoroughly  in  accord  with  the  spirit 
of  the  whole  nation  was  the  movement  it  stands 
for.  The  important  consideration  is  that  the  move- 
ment was  general,  European,  and  popular.  It  de- 
clined in  France  and  Spain  and  increased  in  Eng- 
land, so  that  it  died  under  Philip  IV.  and  Louis 
XTTT.,  just  as  it  reached  a  splendid  climax  in  the  Eng- 
lish struggle  against  the  Stuarts.  But  it  declined 
in  France  because  the  foe  which  destiny,  in  the  way 
I  have  already  recalled,  raised  up  to  the  noblesse 
was  despotism — because  the  king  made  himself 
the  leader  of  the  popular  party  and  the  personifica- 
tion of  national  unity,  just  as  the  tyrants  of  the 
Greek  cities  did  in  the  contest  between  the  people 
and  their  oligarchies.  No  despot  was  ever  more 
"  representative  "  than  Louis  XTV.  declared  himself 
in  the  famous  phrase,  "L'Etat,  c'est  moi."  It  re- 
sumed its  sway,  sanctioned,  secured,  and  modified 
by  the  Revolution,  after  the  monarchy  ceased  to 
represent  its  cause  under  Louis  XV.,  and  the 
"deluge  "  issued  in  constitutional  government  of  a 
real,  that  is  to  say,  a  written  kind  fortified  and 
guaranteed  by  a  code.  In  England,  on  the  other 
hand,  owing  its  popularity  to  its  sympathy  with  the 
feudal  caste  notion  of  contract,  it  developed45ecaus« 


852  FRENCH  TRAITS 

the  Third  Estate,  never  concerned  about  associating 
political  power  to  political  freedom,  passed  into  the 
control  of  a  powerful  set  of  allied  nobles  ;  and  the 
politics  of  the  country  speedily  became  a  contest 
between  a  Tory  and  a  Whig  aristocracy — repre- 
sentative government  being  the  weapon  of  each, 
and  used  as  the  instrument  of  popular  oppression 
to  this  day,  when  it  gives  Lord  Lonsdale  forty  liv- 
ings and  the  Duke  of  Westminster  half  the  West 
End  of  London. 

In  a  word,  history  shows  that  representative  gov- 
ernment is,  in  the  first  place,  not  in  itself  a  talis- 
man, and,  in  the  second,  that  though  it  tends  in 
great  measure  to  promote  liberty,  it  easily  may  be, 
and  in  England  has  been,  used  to  subvert  equality 
and  fraternity.  Hence  the  wisest  eulogists  of  Eng- 
land refrain  from  extolling  it  as  a  taHsman,  affect 
to  disregard  "  institutions  "  of  all  kinds  as  anything 
other  than  the  outward  signs  of  progress  really  ac- 
complished through  force  of  character,  preferring 
1640  to  1688,  for  example,  and  rightly  attributing 
every  English  political  step  ahead  to  moral  causes. 
But  this  is  not  at  all  the  case  with  the  French, 
whose  turn  for  ideas  and  intelligence  naturally  leads 
them  to  invent  civilizing  agencies  instead  of  relying 
on  the  hap-hazard  in  this  field.  An  important  ele- 
ment in  the  French  character,  indeed,  is  precisely 
this  confidence  in  the  virtue  of  philosophic  organi- 
zation— in  what  we  are  apt  to  stigmatize  as  "paper 
constitutions,"  scientific  pedantry,  and  "revolution- 


DEMOCRACY  353 

ary  methotls  "  generally.  It  is  just  as  paradoxical 
to  accuse  the  French  of  leaving  out  of  the  account 
the  complexity  and  perversity  of  human  nature  in 
their  mathematical  and  rule  and  compass  political 
philosophy,  as  it  is  superficial  to  assert  that  their 
national  character  unfits  them  for  self-government — 
for  the  democratic  institutions  which  history  proves 
they  have  won  in  the  face  of  difficulties  that  would 
infallibly  have  discouraged  a  less  determined  and 
inveterate  democratic  national  instinct.  It  is  all 
very  well  to  talk  about  the  advantages  of  perso- 
nal liberty  sanctioned  by  character  and  the  capac- 
ity for  self-government  (meaning  by  self-govern- 
ment either  the  absence  of  institutions  or  what  we 
call  "  home-rule  "),  but  how  irrational  is  it  to  re- 
proach a  people  whose  character  is  such  that  they 
are  disinclined  to  dispense  with  institutions  and 
centralization,  whose  society  is  so  highly  developed, 
so  organic  and  solidaire  that  the  limitation  of  one 
man's  rights  by  another  man's  wrongs  occurs  far 
more  quickly  than  elsewhere — how  irrational  is  it, 
I  say,  to  reproach  such  a  people  with  failing  to  con- 
sider "man's  nature  as  modified  by  his  habits," 
when  their  habits  have  no  special  sanction  for  them 
and,  so  far  as  they  are  inveterate,  are  in  harmony 
with  nature — whose  habit  it  is,  in  a  word,  to  con- 
sider reason  rather  than  habit !  If  it  is  the  French 
nature  to  believe  in  theories,  theories  rather  than  the 
anomalies  and  systems  of  checks  in  which  they  do 
not  believe  should  predominate  in  their  institutions. 
23 


354  FRENCH  TRAITS 

How  idle  is  it  to  commiserate  them  for  their  insta- 
bility, when  not  stabihty  but  flux  is  their  ideal! 
With  us  instabihty  would  doubtless  be  very  dis- 
astrous (though  we  can  easily  see  how  a  little  of  it 
would  benefit  our  English  kin),  because  we  ourselves 
look  upon  it  as  a  destructive  and  disintegrating 
agent,  not  as  a  condition  of  progress — quite  aside 
from  the  additional  reason  arising  from  the  fact  that 
we  were  born  in  the  butterfly  state,  so  to  speak, 
whereas  the  French  still  are,  to  a  degree,  enmeshed 
in  the  filaments  of  their  ecclesiastical  and  civil  chrys- 
alis of  feudality. 

This  is  why  we  quite  misconceive  the  revolution- 
ary spirit,  as  exemplified  in  French  history.  The 
revolutionary  spirit,  as  thus  exemplified,  is  as  difier- 
ent  from  the  rebelUous  and  turbulent  spirit  as  it  is 
from  the  spirit  of  submission  and  servility.  It  is 
the  reforming  and  revising  instinct.  It  dehghts  in 
making  over  everything,  in  carrying  out  new  ideas, 
in  taking  a  new  point  of  view.  It  has  invariably  a 
programme.  It  disbelieves  in  the  sanctity  of  the 
status  quo  because  its  instinct  is  to  press  forward. 
It  believes,  for  the  same  reason,  in  experiment,  in 
essay,  effort,  intention.  It  is  restlessly  constructive. 
It  is  scientific  rather  than  sentimental.  It  aims  at 
administering  rather  than  governing.  When  in 
reply  to  Louis  XVIth's  "C'est  done  une  revolte?" 
the  Due  de  Liancourt  answered :  "Non,  Sire,  c'est 
une  revolution,"  he  meant  something  very  different 
from  a  revolt  on  a  very  large  scale,  and  hkely  for 


DEMOCRACY  356 

that  reason  to  be  successful.  He  was  prophesying 
an  organic  change,  the  disappearance  of  the  old 
order  before  the  rise  of  the  new.  Revolution,  in 
fine,  with  the  French,  means  largely  change  of  ad- 
ministration, not  the  subversion  of  order  which  we 
fancy  it  to  mean  with  them,  and  which  it  would 
mean  with  any  people  who  regard  not  social  (or 
civil)  but  political  law  as  the  basis  of  the  established 
order  and  the  condition  of  civilization.  The  two 
points  of  view  are  very  different,  and  spring  respect- 
ively from  the  individual  spirit  anxious  for  freedom 
from  constraint,  and  the  social  instinct  concerned 
about  effective  organization,  and  therefore  bent  on 
changing  the  organic,  rather  than  disobeying  the 
statutory,  law.  The  state  being  regarded  as  the 
most  important  instrument  of  civilization,  a  truly 
democratic  people  like  the  French  is  naturally  pre- 
disposed to  revolutions  whereby  it  may  get  posses- 
sion of  an  administration  which  it  believes  either 
tyrannical  or  ineffective — which  is,  for  any  reason, 
unpopular ;  whereas,  trusting  solely  to  individual  in- 
itiative for  civilizing  agencies,  it  is  far  easier  for 
Anglo-Saxondom  quietly  to  await  a  revolution  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington's  kind — that  is  to  say,  a 
revolution  which  is  no  revolution  at  all,  and  which 
involves  a  delay  that  has  undoubtedly  caused  untold 
misery  to  the  people  of  England,  however  serenely 
Tennyson  may  celebrate  the  slow  broadening  down 
from  precedent  to  precedent,  and  however  com- 
fortably "The  Saturday  Review"  may  sneer  at  the 


366  FRENCH  TRAITS 

searching  and  lofty  criticism  of  such  works  as  Mr. 
Whiteing's  "The  Island."  To  "hold  a  fretful 
realm  in  awe"  is  not,  in  a  word,  considered  in 
France  the  only  or  the  main  function  of  "  the  com- 
mon sense  of  most." 

Nor  does  the  French  revolutionary  spirit  conflict 
with  what  we  ordinarily  mean  by  respect  for  law, 
and  it  is  quite  erroneous  to  imagine,  from  their  po- 
litical tumultuousness,  that  in  general  the  French 
have  less  of  this  than  ourselves.  On  the  contrary, 
they  have  considerably  more  of  it,  as,  inconsistently, 
we  frequently  attest  when  we  have  an  opportunity  to 
accuse  them  of  being  "slavish"  in  this  regard.  The 
deference  for  authority  shown  in  conduct  is  as  great 
as  that  witnessed  for  public  opinion  in  the  matter 
of  individual  ideals  of  all  sorts.  Demeanor  which 
we  describe  as  outrageous  is  with  the  French  not 
permis.  There  is  nothing  corresponding  to  the  lynch 
law  established  en  permanence  in  some  of  our  com- 
munities that  are  by  no  means  to  be  called 
"pioneer  sections."  Purely  social  disturbances 
never  reach  the  degree  of  violence  indicated  in  the 
existence  of  White  Caps  and  similar  organizations. 
No  one  carries  a  revolver.  No  individual — no  cor- 
poration even — ever  "  defies  the  law."  Such  riots 
as  the  Cincinnati  outburst  some  years  ago  over 
the  continued  miscarriage  of  justice,  do  not  occur. 
Labor  troubles,  however  marked  by  turbulence  and 
even  bloodshed  on  occasion,  do  not  result  in  such 
subversion  of  order  as  the  Pittsburgh  riots  of  1877. 


DEMOCRACY  367 

The  confidence  one  feels  in  freedom  from  the  perils 
of  darkness  and  unsavory  neighborhoods,  from 
molestation  or  annoyance,  is  quite  sensible  to  the 
American  in  Paris,  and  is  certainly  attributable 
rather  to  the  ingrained  law-abidingness  of  the  peo- 
ple than  to  the  perfection  of  the  Paris  police  sys- 
tem. It  need  hardly  be  added  that  this  respect  and 
regard  spring  rather  from  the  sense  of  conformity 
than  that  of  subjection.  During  the  Commune  of 
1871,  which  we  always  think  of  as  a  "  Saturnalian  " 
riot,  private  property,  if  it  was  not  perfectly  safe, 
went  at  all  events  extraordinarily  unmolested.  The 
very  cry  that  "  the  people  "  should  be  permitted  to 
be  their  own  police  was  as  ideal  as  it  was  absurd. 
The  license  that  reigned  in  many  respects  was  by  no 
means  brigandish  and  disorderly.  It  was  the  in- 
evitable concomitant  of  attempting  to  execute  the 
wild  notion  that  order  could  be  preserved  by  good 
will  as  well  as  by  organization.  The  "  government " 
still  administered  and  directed  the  Th6atre  Franjais, 
for  example.  And  in  fine,  theoretically  speaking 
and  except  for  the  inevitable  laxity  accompanying 
the  overturning  of  the  established  order,  respect  for 
law  was  essentially  undiminished.  The  burning  of 
the  Tuileries  was  the  work  of  despair  and  an  in- 
cident of  the  Commune's  death  agony  ;  but  the  over- 
throw of  the  Vendome  column  was  a  very  decorous 
and  solemn — solemn  in  the  sense  of  solennel — 
proceeding. 

A  good  deal  of  the  turbvilence  of  the  Revolution 


368  FRENCH  TRAITS 

we  misunderstand  in  the  same  way,  from  mistaking 
the  proper  point  of  view.  Even  as  hostile  a  critic 
of  the  Revolution  as  Gouverneur  Morris,  totally 
out  of  sympathy  with  every  effort  for  reform  that 
did  not  imply  the  adoption  of  EngHsh  institutions, 
whose  "Diary"  hardly  mentions  any  of  the  great 
popular  leaders  except  Mirabeau,  and  testifies  to  a 
curious  unconsciousness  of  the  great  movement  go- 
ing on  about  him  outside  of  boudoirs  and  salons,  is 
less  impressed  by  the  popular  violence  than  we  are 
apt  to  be,  because  he  was  inevitably  better  oriented. 
He  enjoyed  the  truth  of  impressionism,  and  was  at  all 
events  not  misled  by  a  factitious  perspective.  "  Free- 
dom and  tranquilHty  are  seldom  companions,"  he 
observes  with  characteristic  sententiousness,  and  he 
considers  the  capture  of  the  Bastille  "  an  instance  of 
great  intrepidity  " — which  is  valuable  testimony  to 
contemporary  feeling.  Much  of  the  violence  of  the 
Revolution  was  animated  by  a  certain  loftiness  of 
political  purpose,  even  when  exasperated  by  a  situa- 
tion typified  in  the  spectacular  contrast  of  starving 
Paris  and  feasting  Versailles.  Excess  loses  a  cer- 
tain element  of  its  viciousness  when  it  is  indulged 
in  by  temperaments  ordinarily  responsive  only  to 
the  intelligence.  The  intelligence  guided  only  by 
what  metaphysicians  call  "  the  logical  understand- 
ing," and  unaffected  by  the  sentiment  surround- 
ing the  status  quo,  inevitably  leads  to  uncompro- 
mising conduct,  which  to  instinctive  dependence 
on  precedent  seems  more  like  excess  than  it  really 


DEMOCRACY  359 

is.  In  other  words,  excess  is  wholesomely  and 
essentially  modified  when  those  who  are  guilty  of 
it  do  not  regard  it  as  excess  at  all.  During  all  the 
tumult  of  the  Ke volution,  society  subsisted  with  a 
completeness  we  should  find  it  difficult  to  imagine, 
and  such  as  certainly  could  not  exist  during  an 
anarchy  as  absolute  as  that  which  we  fancy  existed 
during  the  Terror.  Not  only  was  the  amount  of 
beneficent  legislation  accomplished  prodigious,  as 
Mr.  John  Morley  points  out,  but  art,  letters,  society 
flourished  as  gaily  as  they  had  done  under  the 
ancien  regime.  The  galleries  of  the  Louvre  were 
opened  with  eclat  October  10,  1793.  The  Kevolu- 
tion  in  fact  produced  a  school  of  painting  of  its 
own.  Every  sign  of  civilization  subsisted ;  the  po- 
litical turmoil  was,  in  fact,  universally  accepted  by  its 
authors  as  in  the  interest  of  civilization. 

It  is  easy  indeed  to  look  at  even  the  cruelty  and 
savagery  of  the  Terror,  often  instanced  as  an  evi- 
dence of  racial  bloodthirstiuess,  from  a  more  impar- 
tial point  of  view  than  we  usually  take,  without  in 
any  sense  assuming  an  apologetic  attitude.  It  was 
not  at  all  the  cruelty  and  savagery  of  the  last  Valois 
days,  any  more  than  it  partook  of  the  bouffe  character 
so  significantly  pointed  out  by  Voltaire  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  Fronde  tumults.  The  cruelty  of  the 
Revolution  proceeded  from  individual  rather  than 
national  character.  The  Catholic  Church  and  admin- 
istrative centralization  had  modified  individual  char- 
acter greatly  in  the  direction  of  greatly  lessening  the 


360  FRENCH  TRAITS 

individual  sense  of  responsibility — to  the  point  indi- 
cated by  Michelet  in  calling  France  "a  nation  of  sav. 
ages  civilized  by  the  conscription."  By  this  extrav- 
agant remark  Michelet  did  not  at  all  mean  that 
before  the  conscription  Frenchmen  were  brutal,  but 
simply  that  they  were  uncivilized  ;  that  individually 
they  needed  self-control,  and  as  a  nation  social  or- 
ganization. But  the  sense  of  the  dignity  of  human 
nature  is  an  even  more  civilized  feeling  than  the 
sense  of  the  sanctity  of  human  life,  and  many  of  the 
atrocities,  even,  of  the  Revolution  were  committed  in 
ostensible  vindication  of  the  former  principle.  One 
is  the  maxim  of  a  live-and-let-live  individualism,  the 
other  that  of  a  society  penetrated  by  the  feeling  that 
life  is  not  worth  considering,  except  in  accordance 
with  principles  which  make  it  worth  living.  Com- 
pare, for  example,  the  "blood-thirsty  clinging  to 
life  "  of  Matthew  Arnold's  famous  portly  Cheapside 
jeweller,  with  the  sentiment  animating  the  proscribed 
Condorcet  writing  a  eulogy  of  the  Revolution  at  the 
moment  its  excesses  were  forcing  him  to  suicide— an 
event  which  he  regarded  as  a  passing  and  compara- 
tively trifling  incident  A  certain  recklessness  of 
one's  own  life  and  the  contempt  for  that  of  others 
go  together.  Condorcet's  heroic  indifference  to 
death  was  not  at  the  time  extraordinary.  Many  of 
the  important  victims  of  the  guillotine  may  almost 
be  said  to  have  "yielded  gracefully."  Respect  for 
human  life  is  undoubtedly,  as  we  are  never  tired  of 
preaching  to  some  of  our  own  communities,  the  first 


DEMOCRACY  361 

condition  of  civilization,  but  only  under  ordinary 
circumstances.  In  crises  of  great  moment  the 
maxim  has  a  routine  and  perfunctory  ring.  In  such 
crises  it  is  only  a  firmament  of  brass  that  echoes 
harmoniously  Wellington's  great  principle  of  revo- 
lution by  due  course  of  law.  Given  an  enthusiasm 
for  ideas  which  excludes  a  care  for  personality,  an 
unqualified  belief  in  reason  unmodified  by  any  sen- 
timental conservatism  whatever,  and  a  subordination 
of  the  sense  of  individuality  and  individual  dignity 
and  responsibihty,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  how  the 
cruelty  and  savagery  of  the  Revolution  is  to  be  ex- 
plained. 

Nationally  and  ideally,  even  during  the  Revolu- 
tion, France  was  eminently  humane.  She  eman- 
cipated her  slaves  and  those  of  everybody  else 
whom  she  could  control.  Whatever  the  individual 
failures  of  her  citizens,  nationally  she  essayed  the 
beau  role  then,  as  since.  In  the  recent  Tonquin  war 
the  French  soldiers  treated  the  Annamese  "  black 
flags  "  with  great  cruelty,  according  to  accepted  ac- 
counts ;  but  officially  the  French  authorities  never 
blew  Sepoys  from  the  mouths  of  cannon.  It  was 
perhaps  the  Quixotism,  but  it  was  at  any  rate  the 
generous  humanity  of  M.  Clemenceau  and  his  fellow- 
Radicals,  which  prevented  France  from  joining  Eng- 
land in  Egyptian  interference  in  the  interest  of 
bondholders  ;  and  what  the  sacrifice  was,  the  en- 
vious chafing  of  France  under  the  English  Egyptian 
occupation  abundantly  witnesses.     Nice  and  Savoy 


362  FRENOA  ^AITS 

were  perhaps  a  sufficient  reward  for  French  aid  to 
Victor  Emmanuel  in  1859,  but  what  fought  Solferino 
and  Magenta  was  French  national  enthusiasm  for 
the  unification  of  Italy.  The  Mexico  scheme  had 
nothing  of  the  same  backing,  and  would  have  failed 
in  consequence,  perhaps,  without  our  own  deter- 
mined hostility  and  admirable  attitude.  One  re- 
calls also  the  French  interest  in  Greece,  and  the 
French  indisposition  to  join  all  other  powers  in 
"  coercing "  her  in  1886.  The  massacre  of  Jafib, 
again,  was  savagely  inhuman,  but  the  army  which 
committed  it  would  not  have  destroyed  the  canal 
of  Bruges.  Nor  is  it  any  more  possible  to  fancy  the 
contemporary  Irish  evictions  taking  place  under 
French  auspices,  than  it  is  to  imagine  the  noy- 
odes  of  I^antes  conducted  by  Englishmen,  unless 
the  noyes  had  been  proved  guilty  of  some  offence 
against  positive  legality.  As  to  the  Revolution,  it  is 
possible,  no  doubt,  to  say  much  in  excuse  of  its  vio- 
lence, its  inhumanity,  and  its  aggression.  Mr.  John 
Morley  has  pointed  out,  in  reply  to  M  Taine,  what 
especial  justification  the  French  Tiers  £tat  had  for 
its  vengeance  on  the  noblesse  and  the  clergy.  To 
the  last  the  king  and  his  party  were  conspirators ; 
there  was  no  opportunity  for  a  revolution  like  that 
of  1688  in  England,  accomplished  only  through  a 
change  of  dynasties.  And  in  1649  it  was  no  harder 
to  dispose  of  Charles  than  in  1793  it  was  of  Louis. 
Had  Charles  had  a  court,  had  the  English  crown  re- 
duced its  feudal  chiefs  to  courtiers,  had  England 


DEMOCRACY  363 

aimed  at  the  transformation  instead  of  the  mitiga- 
tion of  feudalism,  had  London  been  Paris  in  a 
word,  the  taking  off  of  Charles  would  have  been  less 
decorous  and  less  solitary,  though  it  could  not  have 
been  more  cynical  and  brutal.  As  for  aggression, 
when  it  is  observed  that  France,  even  before  Napo- 
leon, had  the  dream  of  succeeding  the  Roman  Em- 
pire in  "  assuring  to  herself  the  empire  of  the  world," 
as  Mr.  Arnold  asserts,  the  fact  is  lost  sight  of  that 
the  very  existence  of  the  French  Republic  compelled 
aggression.  Had  the  wars  been  carefully  defensive, 
the  great  cause  would  have  been  lost  and  the  Bour- 
bons restored.  The  Republic  was  engaged  in  a  life 
and  death  struggle,  and  if  it  had  not  been  defiant  it 
would  have  been  destroyed. 

After  all,  both  historically  and  essentially,  the 
French  revolutionary  spirit  means  devotion  to  rea- 
son. Of  the  two  great  maxims  of  the  modern 
creed  :  no  class  can  legislate  for  another,  and  legis- 
lation should  conform  to  reason  and  not  to  habit, 
which  is  bom  of  unreasoning  adjustments,  the 
French  excel  us  perhaps  in  believing  in  the  second 
as  firmly  as  they  do  in  the  first.  "We  may  fairly 
say  in  explanation  that  our  conservatism  is  really 
the  clinging  to  a  custom  and  habit  essentially  radi- 
cal. Our  status  quo  is  the  Radical  hope  of  Europe. 
We  have  no  need  of  the  revolutionary  spirit,  since 
reason  rather  than  tradition  presided  in  the  coun- 
sels crystallized  in  our  Constitution  itself.  Content 
and  unrest  mean  very  different   things   here   and 


364  FRENCH   TRAIT3 

abroad.  Our  party  of  change — called  during  the 
war  period  "  Radical "  in  the  etymological  sense  alone 
— has  really  thus  far  been  the  one  which  corre- 
sponds to  the  European  Right  Like  the  European 
Right  it  stands  for  strong  government,  government 
by  "  the  best  people,"  centralization,  subsidies,  state 
control  of  education,  limitation  of  the  suffrage,  op- 
position to  immigration.  Should  the  popular  party 
become  largely  proletarian,  the  case  may  alter  ;  but 
at  present  our  popular  party  is  our  conservative  one, 
and  the  fact  makes  it  impossible  to  institute  a  par- 
allel between  our  party  relations  and  development 
and  those  of  Europe.  But  this  very  fact  leads  us  to 
misconceive  the  European  revolutionary  spirit  still 
endeavoring  to  plant  the  standard  of  reason  in  the 
citadel  held  by  custom — a  citadel  we  fortified  ration- 
ally a  century  ago.  It  leads  us  to  conceive  of  it  as 
merely  turbulent,  lawless,  unpractical. 

Nevertheless,  we  are  prone  to  reflect,  the  revolu- 
tionary spirit,  whatever  its  attendant  advantages, 
has  inevitably  the  effect  of  establishing  a  crisis  en 
permanence.  It  is  a  force,  we  insist,  that  may  be 
either  rigorously  repressed  or  blindly  followed,  but 
cannot  profitably  be  utilized.  To  the  conservative 
Anglo-Saxon  political  temperament,  it  seems  to 
mean  a  degree  of  instability  inconsistent  with  sound 
political  growth.  We  cannot  lielp,  in  consequence; 
always  considering  the  political  situation  in  France 
as  a  spectacle  rather  than  a  study.     What  interests 


DEMOCRACY  365 

US  in  it  at  present,  for  example,  is  solely  the  pros 
pect  for  continuance  of  the  present  parliamentary 
reqime.  But,  though  it  would  be  idle  to  hazard  pre- 
dictions in  the  case  of  a  people  which  has  no  regard 
for  precedent,  it  is,  I  think,  clear  that  whatever 
changes  the  French  organic  law  is  destined  to  under- 
go, they  will  not  be  essentially  undemocratic.  French 
democracy  is,  as  I  began  by  saying,  held  consciously 
as  an  ideal,  and  for  that  reason  alone  its  puissance 
has  the  promise  of  permanence.  "It  was  never  any 
part  of  oiu"  creed,"  says  Matthew  Arnold,  with  admir- 
able candor,  "  that  the  great  right  and  blessedness  of 
an  Irishman,  or  indeed  of  anybody  but  an  English- 
man, is  to  do  as  he  likes,  and  we  have  no  scruple  at  all 
about  abridging  if  necessary  a  non-Englishman's  as- 
sertion of  personal  liberty."  Compare  with  this  a 
dozen  sentences  to  be  found  in  the  same  writer's 
"Friendship's  Garland;"  such  as:  "They  [the 
French]  were  unripe  for  the  task  they,  in  '89,  set 
themselves  to  do  ;  and  yet  .  .  .  they  left  their  trace 
in  half  the  beneficial  reforms  through  Europe ;  and  if 
you  ask  how,  at  Naples,  a  convent  became  a  school,  or 
in  Ticino  an  intolerable  oligarchy  ceased  to  govern, 
or  in  Prussia  Stein  was  able  to  carry  his  land-reforms, 
you  get  one  answer:  The  French/  Till  modern  so- 
ciety is  finally  formed,  French  democracy  will  still  be 
a  power  in  Europe."  Besides  such  pertinence  as  this, 
much  of  Mr.  Lowell's  famous  Birmingham  address 
has  something  of  a  post-prandial  flavor,  as  of  enun- 
ciations essentially  detached  and  undirected ; — "  the 


866  FRENCH   TRAITS 

French  faUacy  that  a  new  system  of  government 
could  be  ordered  like  a  new  suit  of  clothes,"  "  no 
dithjTambic  affirmations  or  wire-drawn  analyses  of 
the  Rights  of  Man  would  serve,"  "  the  British 
Constitution.  .  .  is  essentially  democratic,"  "Eng- 
land, indeed,  may  be  called  a  monarchy  with  demo- 
cratic tendencies,"  the  citation  from  Lord  Sher- 
brooke,  the  inevitable  allusion  to  IkL  Zola,  the 
eloquent  conclusion  that  "  our  healing  is  not  in  the 
storm  or  in  the  whirlwind,  it  is  not  in  monarchies,  or 
aristocracies,  or  democracies,  but  rather  in  the  still 
small  voice  that  speaks  to  the  conscience  and  the 
heart !  "  This  last  is  doubtless  very  true,  but  for  an 
address  on  "  Democracy  "  it  does  not,  I  think,  betray 
that  enthusiasm  for  the  democratic  ideal  which  a 
French  orator  of  anything  like  Mr.  Lowell's  eminence 
would  display.  It  has  a  very  different  note,  a  very 
different  tone  and  color  from  M.  Goblet,  for  example, 
addressing  the  students  of  the  Sorbonne  on  the  same 
subject.  And  democracy  such  as  M.  Goblet's  is 
neither  extreme  nor  exceptional  in  France  at  the 
present  time :  it  is,  in  fact,  so  general  as  largely  to 
account  for  the  presence  at  the  head  of  affaii's  of 
men  of  convictions  and  competent  capacity — men 
like  M.  Goblet,  that  is  to  say — instead  of  those 
saviours  of  society,  those  "  great  men  "  wliose  absence 
in  the  political  life  of  both  France  and  America  Mr. 
Lowell  so  deeply  regrets. 

But  these  men  are  greatly  divided  among  them- 
selves,   they   have   not   that   commanding  personal 


DEMOCRACY  367 

popularity  which  insures  their  remaining  in  power, 
they  are  surrounded  with  difficulties.  The  Catholic 
church,  which  is  in  its  nature  hostile  to  political 
democracy,  is  a  standing  menace.  So  is  its  ally  the 
monarchic  Right.  On  the  other  hand  there  are  the 
Radical  extremists,  with  their  tendency  to  entrust 
their  fortunes  to  an  individual  representative,  whose 
representative  character  may  easily  cease  when  he 
ceases  to  need  it.  Behind  all  is  the  constant  neces- 
sity of  being  ready  for  a  European  war  of  proportions 
which  the  imagination  only  can  prefigure.  Mean- 
time internal  democratic  development  indubitably 
goes  on,  and  it  is  a  mistake  to  fancy  that  it  would 
show  political  wisdom  to  postpone  what  we  call 
"  changes  in  the  organic  law"  till  the  more  con- 
venient season  which  would  doubtless  have  its  own 
difficulties.  The  present  Constitution  has  never  been 
submitted  to  the  popular  judgment,  the  drift  of  feel- 
ing has  distinctly  been  in  favor  of  its  revision  for 
years.  The  questions  of  the  Concordat  and  of  com- 
munal decentralization,  for  example,  are  pressing 
ones,  and  because  they  are  from  the  nature  of  the 
case  "organic"  questions,  to  assume  that  discussion 
of  them  indicates  instability  is  rather  superficial. 
Should  the  present  Constitution  be  revised  in  these 
respects,  we  should  of  course  hear  a  good  deal  of 
French  political  fickleness  in  our  own  press,  and  the 
"  Spectator "  would  have  another  article  on  "  The 
Fall  of  the  French  Republic."  All  the  same.  French- 
men would  still  reply  just  as  they  do  now,  that 


368  FRENCH  TBAIT8 

the  instability  of  their  documentary  constitutions 
doesn't  imply  the  variation  in  "  the  fundamental 
law"  we  take  it  to  mean,  and  that  our  solemnity  in 
the  matter  is  a  little  pedantic  ;  that  the  Code  Napo- 
leon would  still  subsist ;  that  if  they  are  not  as 
much  attached  to  Republican  nomenclature  as  we 
are,  their  democracy  is  at  least  as  deeply  rooted  ;  that 
in  France  political  stabihty,  with  its  accompanying 
danger  of  political  stagnation,  is  by  no  means  the 
basis  of  social  order  and  progress  ;  that  the  state  not 
being  a  medium  but  an  agent,  to  change  its  expres- 
sion when  you  wish  becomes  merely  rational ;  that 
even  a  dictatorship  would  with  them  be  more  truly 
popular  than  are  English  institutions;  that  their 
very  attitude  toward  "  organic  "  change  imphes  the 
formulation  of  grievances  and  definite  propositions 
for  their  redress,  whereas  under  an  unwritten  con- 
stitution progress  is  not  only  slow,  but  accom- 
panied by  the  immense  cost  involved  in  drifting  at 
the  mercy  of  now  one  and  now  the  other  of  two 
opposite  political  temperaments,  whose  preferences 
are  never  formulated  with  anything  like  precision  ; 
and  that  the  formulation  of  ideas  is  one  of  the  great- 
est safeguards  of  popular  government. 

With  our  comparatively  simple  national  politics, 
due  in  great  measure  to  the  autonomy  of  our  States, 
it  is  difficult  for  us  to  appreciate  the  great  complex- 
ity of  French  pohtics,  and  the  number  and  variety 
of  French  political  questions.  Speculation  con- 
cerning  them,  abundant  as  it   is  among  us — for 


DEMOCRACY  369 

France  is  a  perpetually  attractive  spectacle  to  even 
our  sciolists — is  for  this  reason,  if  for  no  others, 
somewhat  barren.  But  there  is  one  clarifying  and 
illuminating  consideration  which  it  is  especially  per- 
tinent to  bear  in  mind.  French  differences  of  opin- 
ion in  regard  to  French  political  questions  are  in 
the  highest  degree  practical,  rather  than,  as  we 
imagine,  irreconcilable  antagonisms  of  sentiment, 
tradition,  temperament,  passion.  "The  internal 
quarrels  which  seem  so  profoundly  to  disturb  and 
distract  us  are  not,  as  Europe  may  assume,  the  re- 
sult of  an  anemic  fever,"  said  M.  Floquet  at  Mar- 
seilles recently,  "  but  on  the  contrary,  a  proof  of 
superabundant  vitality,  and,  so  to  say,  a  passing 
convulsion  of  political  growth."  On  what  a  high  key 
of  statesmanlike  color,  of  patriotic  courage,  that  is 
said !  The  division  of  French  Republicans  into  not 
only  radicals  and  conservatives,  but  into  subsidiary 
groups,  is  commonly  misinterpreted  by  us  in  two 
ways.  It  is  supposed  in  the  first  place  to  indicate 
an  inaptitude  for,  and  restiveness  under,  democratic 
institutions — a  native,  constitutional  repugnance  to 
self-government.  On  the  contrary,  it  attests  the 
French  disposition  toward  democracy,  the  French 
belief  in  it,  and  fearlessness  about  its  perils.  The 
absence  in  France  of  any  hearty  and  instinctive  sub- 
scription to  the  ethics  of  what  Anglo-Saxons  know 
and  worship  as  party  government,  witnesses,  if  not 
a  remarkable  individual  independence,  at  any  rate  a 
far  livelier  interest  in,  a  far  greater  and  more  intelli- 


370  FRENCH  TRAITS 

gent  devotion  to  principles  of  political  philosophy, 
than  are  illustrated  by  party  sheep  following  some 
masterful  personality  as  a  bell-wether,  which  has 
generally  been  the  case  in  England,  or  by  the 
tyranny  of  the  caucus  with  us.  In  England,  the 
rare  political  independent  is  apt  to  be  grotesque. 
With  us  the  tradition  of  party  fealty  has  notoriously 
been  carried  by  that  party  which  has  no  political 
principles,  and  is  based  on  interests  and  sentiment, 
to  the  ridiculous  length  of  assuming  the  independ- 
ent to  be  a  negative  instead  of  a  positive  force,  a 
passive  and  temperamental,  rather  than  an  active 
and  philosophic,  person.  The  far  larger  number  of 
French  independents,  their  variety,  their  activity, 
their  eminence  and  influence,  certainly  indicate  a 
democracy  not  only  ingrained  but  vei-y  highly  de- 
veloped. And  indeed,  since  the  Revolution,  it  has 
been  developing  very  constantly,  though  not  always 
visibly,  until  it  has  now  reached  a  stage  of  dijQfer- 
entiation  which  makes  strict  party  government  seem 
very  oligarchical  in  contrast. 

In  the  second  place,  we  misinterpret  the  existence 
of  "  groups  "  in  the  French  Chamber  as  evidence  of 
a  French  *'lack  of  political  sense."  That  is  a  phrase 
constantly  recurring  in  those  of  our  journals  par- 
tially au  courant  with  French  affairs,  that  is  to  say, 
our  only  journals  thus  au  courant  at  alL  Whenever 
anything  happens  distinctly  traceable  to  the  excess, 
or  even  the  exercise,  of  the  democratic  instinct,  this 
phrase  appears  as  if  issuing  from  the  lumber-room 


DEMOCRACY  37] 

of  perfunctory  political  Toiyiam.  French  political 
independence  has  undoubtedly  its  weak  side.  It 
was  certainly  one  of  Garabetta's  distinctions  that  he 
perceived  this  so  clearly  and  labored  so  strenuously 
to  the  end  of  party  unity.  In  crises,  manifestly,  dis- 
union is,  if  not  fatal,  highly  dangerous  ;  and  though 
French  Republican  independence  does  not  contem- 
plate showing  itself  recalcitrant  in  crises,  it  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  the  habits  formed  and  the  passions 
excited  by  internal  dissension  in  ordinary  times  of 
routine  legislation,  so  to  speak,  have  a  powerful  dis- 
integrating eflfect,  that  might  easily  go  so  far  as  to 
rob  a  crisis  of  that  crystallizing  power  which  French 
Republicans  ascribe  to  it,  and  on  which  they  so  con- 
fidently rely.  It  is  also  true  that  Republican  inde- 
pendence has  done  something  to  keep  alive  that 
standing  menace  to  the  Republic,  the  conservative 
and  clerical  Right.  Had  radicalism  exhibited  a  dis- 
cretion such  as  in  no  country  in  the  world  it  has 
ever  shown,  the  conservative  ranks  might  have  be- 
come permanently  thinned,  owing  to  the  disappear- 
ance of  traditional  distrust  before  the  continued  ab- 
sence of  any  visible  reason  for  its  existence.  Had 
M.  Clemenceau,  for  example,  not  seceded  from  the 
Gambettist  ranks  upon  the  question  of  centraliza- 
tion, very  likely  the  French  Left  would  have  been 
better  able  to-day  than  it  is  to  give  satisfactory 
guarantees  for  the  continuance  of  the  salutary  re- 
pubUcan  form  as  well  as  of  democratic  substance  in 
the  Government  of  the  nation.     The  monarchists 


372  FRENCH   TRAITS 

might  have  been  les8  able  to  nourish  their  organiza- 
tion upon  the  vague  hopes  derived  from  the  specta- 
cle of  Republican  differences.  They  might  possibly 
have  become  discouraged.  But  this  is  surely  spec- 
ulative and,  manifestly,  for  a  great  party  with  a  large 
majority  to  resign  itself  to  purely  defensive  tactics 
until  Bourbons  are  driven  into  learning  or  forget- 
ting something,  contenting  itself  meanwhile  with 
what  many  of  its  members  believed  to  be  the  shadow 
without  the  substance  of  a  Republic ;  to  delay 
needed  and  urgent  reforms  out  of  a  timorous  regard 
for  the  tactics  of  parliamentary  strategy  ;  to  look  at 
every  question  from  an  indirect  and  party,  instead 
of  a  directly  patriotic,  point  of  view — to  do  this 
would  clearly  be  to  paralyze  every  beneficent  activ- 
ity belonging  to  government  by  discussion.  It 
might  be  diplomatic,  but  it  would  be  as  little  a  de- 
monstration of  "  political  sense "  as  it  would  be 
democratic. 

But  whatever  character  the  further  evolution  of. 
the  French  nation  may  assume,  whatever  fate  may 
have  in  store  for  the  most  sentient,  the  most  organ- 
ic, the  most  civilized,  the  most  socially  developed 
people  of  the  modern  world,  it  is  certain  that,  for  a 
long  time  to  come,  "  the  country  of  Europe  in  which 
the  people  is  most  alive  " — according  to  Matthew  Ar- 
nold's acute  synthesis  of  the  results  of  the  Revolu- 
tion— the  country  of  Europe  to  which  we  owe  it 
that  the  Declaration  is  the  definition  rather  than  the 
source  of  our  national  and  individual  rights,  wiD  re- 


DEMOCRACY  87B 

main  for  Americans,  if  not  the  most  exemplary,  at 
least  the  most  animating  figure  among  the  European 
states.  And  however  tradition,  prejudice,  ignorance, 
and  a  different  language  may  obscure  our  vision, 
we  shall  never  fail  to  find  politically  instructive,  in 
proportion  to  our  intelligence  and  the  preservation 
of  our  own  democratic  instincts,  that  one  of  the 
European  powers  the  vast  majority  of  whose  citizens 
— not  being  "subjects"  in  either  a  real  or  a  nominal 
sense — instinctively  echo  La  Bruyere's  sentiment 
which  I  have  already  cited :  "  Faut-il  opter  ?  Je 
veux  etre  peuple ! " 


X 

NEW  YORK  AFTER  PARIS 


NEW  YORK  AFTER  PARIS 

No  American,  not  a  commercial  or  otherwise  har- 
dened traveller,  can  have  a  soul  so  dead  as  to  be  in- 
capable of  emotion  when,  on  his  return  from  a  long 
trip  abroad,  he  catches  sight  of  the  low-lying  and  in- 
significant Long  Island  coast.  One's  excitement  be- 
gins, indeed,  with  the  pilot -boat.  The  pilot-boat  is 
the  first  concrete  symbol  of  those  native  and  nor- 
mal relations  with  one's  fellow-men,  which  one  has 
so  long  observed  in  infinitely  varied  manifestation 
abroad,  but  always  as  a  spectator  and  a  stranger,  and 
which  one  is  now  on  the  eve  of  sharing  himself.  As 
she  comes  up  swiftly,  white  and  graceful,  drops  her 
pilot,  crosses  the  steamer's  bows,  tacks,  and  picks  up 
her  boat  in  the  foaming  wake,  she  presents  a  spec- 
tacle beside  which  the  most  picturesque  Mediter- 
ranean craft,  with  colored  sails  and  lazy  evolutions, 
appear  mistily  in  the  memory  as  elements  of  a  fee- 
ble and  conventional  ideal.  The  ununiformed  piloi 
clambers  on  board,  makes  his  way  to  the  bridge, 
and  takes  command  with  an  equal  lack  of  French 
manner  and  of  EngUsh  affectation  distinctly  palpable 
to  the  sense,  sharpened  by  long  absence  into  observ- 
ing native  characteristics  as  closely  as  foreign  ones. 


378  FRENCH  TRAITS 

If  the  season  be  right  the  afternoon  is  bright,  the 
range  of  vision  apparently  limitless,  the  sky  nearly 
cloudless  and,  by  contrast  with  the  European  firma- 
ment, almost  colorless,  the  July  sun  such  as  no  Pari- 
sian or  Londoner  ever  saw.  The  French  reproach 
us  for  having  no  word  for  "  patrie "  as  distinct 
from  "  pays ; "  we  have  the  thing  at  all  events,  and 
cherish  it,  and  it  needs  only  the  proximity  of  the 
foreigner,  from  whom  in  general  we  are  so  widely 
separated,  to  give  our  patriotism  a  tinge  of  the 
veriest  chauvinism  that  exists  in  France  itself. 

We  fancy  the  feeling  old-fashioned,  and  imagine 
ours  to  be  the  most  cosmopolitan,  the  least  preju- 
diced temperament  in  the  world.  It  is  reasonable 
that  it  should  be.  The  extreme  sensitiveness  no- 
ticed in  us  by  all  foreign  observers  during  the  ante- 
bellum epoch,  and  ascribed  by  Tocqueville  to  our 
self-distrust,  is  naturally  inconsistent  with  our  posi- 
tion and  circumstances  to-day.  A  population  greater 
than  that  of  any  of  the  great  nations,  isolated  by  the 
most  enviable  geographical  felicity  in  the  world 
from  the  narrowing  influences  of  international 
jealousy  apparent  to  every  American  who  travels  in 
Europe,  is  increasingly  less  concerned  at  criticism 
than  a  struggling  provincial  republic  of  half  its  size. 
And  along  with  our  self  confidence  and  our  careless- 
ness of  "  abroad,"  it  is  only  with  the  grosser  element 
among  us  that  national  conceit  has  deepened ;  in 
general,  we  are  apt  to  fancy  we  have  become  cos- 
mopolitan in  proportion  as  we  have  lost  our  provin- 


NEW   YORK    AFTER  PARIS  379 

cialism.  With  us  surely  the  individual  has  not 
withered,  and  if  the  world  has  become  more  and 
more  to  him,  it  is  because  it  is  the  world  at  large 
and  not  the  pent-up  confines  of  his  own  country's  his- 
tory and  extent.  "La  patrie  "  in  danger  would  be 
quickly  enough  rescued — there  is  no  need  to  prove 
that  over  again,  even  to  our  own  satisfaction  ;  but  in 
general  "  la  patrie  "  not  being  in  any  danger,  being 
on  the  contrary  apparently  on  the  very  crest  of  the 
wave  of  the  world,  it  is  felt  not  to  need  much  of  one's 
active  consideration,  and  passively  indeed  is  viewed 
by  many  people,  probably,  as  a  comfortable  and  gi- 
gantic contrivance  for  securing  a  free  field  in  which 
the  individual  may  expand  and  develop.  "Amer- 
ica," says  Emerson,  "  America  is  Opportunity." 
After  all,  the  average  American  of  the  present  day 
says,  a  country  stands  or  falls  by  the  number  of 
properly  expanded  and  developed  individuals  it  pos- 
sesses. But  the  happening  of  any  one  of  a  dozen 
things  unexpectedly  betrays  that  all  this  cosmopoli- 
tanism is  in  great  measure,  and  so  far  as  sentiment 
is  concerned,  a  veneer  and  a  disguise.  Such  a  hap- 
pening is  the  very  change  from  blue  water  to  gray 
that  announces  to  the  returning  American  the  near- 
ness of  that  country  which  he  sometimes  thinks  he 
prizes  more  for  what  it  stands  for  than  for  itself. 
It  is  not,  he  then  feels  with  a  sudden  flood  of  emo- 
tion, that  America  is  home,  but  that  home  is  Amer- 
ica. America  comes  suddenly  to  mean  what  it  never 
meant  before. 


380  FRENCH   TKAITS 

Unhappily  for  this  exaltation,  ordinary  life  is  not 
composed  of  emotional  crises.  It  is  ordinary  life 
with  a  vengeance  which  one  encounters  in  issuing 
from  the  steamer  dock  and  facing  again  his  native 
city.  Paris  never  looked  so  lovely,  so  exquisite  to 
the  sense  as  it  now  appears  in  the  memory.  All 
that  Parisian  regularity,  order,  decorum,  and  beauty 
into  which,  although  a  stranger,  your  own  activities 
fitted  so  perfectly  that  you  were  only  half-conscious 
of  its  existence,  was  not,  then,  merely  normal, 
wholly  a  matter  of  course.  Emerging  into  West 
Street,  amid  the  solicitations  of  hackmen,  the  tink- 
ling jog-trot  of  the  most  ignoble  horse-cars  you  have 
seen  since  leaving  home,  the  dry  dust  blowing  into 
your  eyes,  the  gaping  black  holes  of  broken  pave- 
ments, the  unspeakable  filth,  the  line  of  red  brick 
buildings  prematurely  decrepit,  the  sagging  multi- 
tude of  telegi'aph  wires,  the  clumsy  electric  lights 
depending  before  the  beer  saloon  and  the  groggery, 
the  curious  confusion  of  spruceness  and  squalor  in 
the  aspect  of  these  latter,  which  also  seem  legion — 
confronting  all  this  for  the  first  time  in  three  years, 
say,  you  think  with  wonder  of  your  disappointment 
at  not  finding  the  Tuileries  Gardens  a  mass  of  flow- 
ers, and  with  a  blush  of  the  times  you  have  tol(| 
Frenchmen  that  New  York  was  very  much  likf 
Paris.  New  York  is  at  this  moment  the  most  foreigni 
looking  city  you  have  ever  seen  ;  in  going  abroad 
the  American  discounts  the  unexpected';  returning 
alfev  the  insensible  orientation  of  Europe,  the  con- 


NEW   YORK   AFTER   PARIS  381 

trast  with  things  recently  familiar  is  prodigious,  be- 
cause one  is  so  entirely  unprepared  for  it.  One 
thinks  to  be  at  home,  and  finds  himself  at  the  spec- 
tacle. New  York  is  less  like  any  European  city  than 
any  European  city  is  like  any  other.  It  is  distin- 
guished from  them  all — even  from  London — by  the 
ignoble  character  of  the  res  publicce,  and  the  refuge 
of  taste,  care,  wealth,  pride,  self-respect  even,  in 
private  and  personal  regions.  A  splendid  carriage, 
liveried  servants  without  and  Paris  dresses  within, 
rattling  over  the  scandalous  paving,  splashed  by  the 
neglected  mud,  catching  the  rusty  drippings  of  the 
hideous  elevated  railway,  wrenching  its  axle  in  the 
tram-track  in  avoiding  a  mountainous  wagon  load  of 
commerce  on  this  hand  and  a  garbage  cart  on  that, 
caught  in  a  jam  of  horse-cars  and  a  blockade  of 
trucks,  finally  depositing  its  dainty  freight  to  pick 
its  way  across  a  sidewalk  eloquent  of  ofiicial  neglect 
and  private  contumely,  to  a  shop  door  or  a  residence 
stoop — such  a  contrast  as  this  sets  us  off  from  Eu- 
rope very  definitely  and  in  a  very  marked  degree. 

There  is  no  palpable  New  York  in  the  sense  in 
which  there  is  a  Paris,  a  Vienna,  a  Milan.  You 
can  touch  it  at  no  point.  It  is  not  even  ocular.  There 
is  instead  a  Fifth  Avenue,  a  Broadway,  a  Central 
Park,  a  Chatham  Square.  How  they  have  dwindled, 
by  the  way.  Fifth  Avenue  might  be  any  one  of  a 
dozen  London  streets  in  the  first  impression  it  makes 
on  the  retina  and  leaves  on  the  mind.  The  opposite 
side  of  Madison  Square  is  but  a  step  away.     The 


382  FRENCH  TRAIT8 

spacious  ball  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel  has  shrunk 
to  stifling  proportions.  Thirty-fourth  Street  is  a 
lane  ;  the  City  Hall  a  band-box  ;  the  Central  Park 
a  narrow  strip  of  elegant  landscape  whose  lateral 
limitations  are  constantly  forced  upon  the  sense  by 
the  Lenox  Library  on  one  side  and  a  monster  apart- 
ment house  on  the  other.  The  American  fondness 
for  size — for  pure  bigness — needs  explanation,  it  ap- 
pears ;  we  care  for  size,  but  inartistically  ;  we  care 
nothing  for  proportion,  which  is  what  makes  size 
count.  Everything  is  on  the  same  scale  ;  there  is 
no  play,  no  movement.  An  exception  should  be 
made  in  favor  of  the  big  business  building  and  the 
apartment  house  which  have  arisen  within  a  few 
yeai'S,  and  which  have  greatly  accentuated  the  gro- 
tesqueness  of  the  city's  sky-Une  as  seen  from  either 
the  New  Jersey  or  the  Long  Island  shore.  They 
are  perhaps  rather  high  than  big  ;  many  of  them  were 
built  before  the  authorities  noticed  them  and  fol- 
lowed unequally  in  the  steps  of  other  civilized  muni- 
cipal governments,  from  that  of  ancient  Rome  down, 
in  prohibiting  the  passing  of  a  fixed  limit.  But  big- 
ness has  also  evidently  been  one  of  their  architectonic 
motives,  and  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  they  are  so 
far  out  of  scale  with  the  surrounding  buildings  as  to 
avoid  the  usual  commonplace,  only  by  creating  a 
positively  disagreeable  effect.  The  aspect  of  Fifty- 
seventh  Street  between  Broadway  and  Seventh 
Avenue,  for  example,  is  certainly  that  of  the  world 
upside  down  :  a  Gothic  church  utterly  concealed,  not 


NEW  YORK   AFTER  PARIS  383 

to  say  crushed,  by  contiguous  flats,  and  confronted 
by  the  overwhelming  "Osborne,"  which  towers 
above  anything  in  the  neighborhood,  and  perhaps 
makes  the  most  powerful  impression  that  the  re- 
turned traveller  receives  during  his  first  week  or  two 
of  strange  sensations.  Yet  the  "  Osborne's  "  dimen- 
sions are  not  very  different  from  those  of  the  Arc 
de  I'Etoile.  It  is  true  it  does  not  face  an  avenue  of 
majestic  buildings  a  mile  and  a  half  long  and  two 
hundred  and  thirty  feet  wide,  but  the  association 
of  these  two  structures,  one  a  private  enterprise  and 
the  other  a  public  monument,  together  with  the  ob- 
vious suggestions  of  each,  furnish  a  not  misleading 
illustration  of  both  the  spectacular  and  the  moral 
contrast  between  New  York  and  Paris,  as  it  appears 
unduly  magnified  no  doubt  to  the  sense  surprised 
to  notice  it  at  all. 

Still  another  reason  for  the  foreign  aspect  of  the 
New  Yorker's  native  city  is  the  gradual  withdrawing 
of  the  American  element  into  certain  quarters,  its 
transformation  or  essential  modification  in  others, 
and  in  the  rest  the  presence  of  the  lees  of  Europe. 
At  every  step  you  are  forced  to  realize  that  New 
York  is  the  second  Irish  and  the  third  or  fourth 
German  city  in  the  world.  However  gi*eat  our  suc- 
cess in  drilling  this  foreign  contingent  of  our  social 
army  into  order  and  reason  and  self-respect — and  it 
is  not  to  be  doubted  that  this  success  gives  us  a  dis- 
tinction wholly  new  in  histoiy — nevertheless  our  ef- 
fect upon  its  members  has  been  in  the  direction  of 


884  FRENCH  TRAITS 

development  rather  than  of  assimilation.  We  have 
given  them  our  opportunity,  permitted  them  the  e» 
pansion  denied  them  in  their  own  several  feudalities, 
made  men  of  serfs,  demonstrated  the  utility  of  self- 
government  under  the  most  trying  conditions,  proved 
the  efficacy  of  our  elastic  institutions  on  a  scale  truly 
grandiose  ;  but  evidently,  so  far  as  New  York  is  con- 
cerned, we  have  done  this  at  the  sacrifice  of  a  dis- 
tinct and  obvious  nationality.  To  an  observant 
sense  New  York  is  nearly  as  little  national  as  Port 
Said.  It  contrasts  absolutely  in  this  respect  with 
Paris,  whose  assimilating  power  is  prodigious ;  every 
foreigner  in  Paris  eagerly  seeks  Parisianization. 

Ocularly,  therefore,  the  "  note  "  of  New  York  seems 
that  of  characterless  individualism.  The  monotony 
of  the  chaotic  composition  and  movement  is,  para- 
doxically, its  most  abiding  impression.  And  as  the 
whole  is  destitute  of  defiuiteness,  of  distinction,  the 
parts  are,  correspondingly,  individually  insignificant. 
Where  in  the  world  are  all  the  types  ?  one  asks  one's 
self  in  renewing  his  old  walks  and  desultory  wander- 
ings. Where  is  the  New  York  counterpart  of  that 
astonishing  variety  of  types  which  makes  Paris  what 
it  is  morally  and  pictorially,  the  Paris  of  Balzac  as 
well  as  the  Paris  of  M.  Jean  B^raud.  Of  a  sudden 
the  lack  of  nationality  in  our  familiar  literature  and 
art  becomes  luminously  explicable.  One  perceives 
why  Mr.  Howells  is  so  successful  in  confining  him- 
self to  the  simplest,  broadest,  most  representative 
representatives,  why  Mr.  James  goes  abroad  invari- 


NEW   YORK   AFTER  PARIS  385 

ably  for  his  mise-en-schie,  and  often  for  his  charac- 
ters, why  Mr.  Reinhart  lives  in  Paris,  and  Mr.  Abbey 
in  London.  New  York  is  this  and  that,  it  is  incon- 
testably  unlike  any  other  great  city,  but  compared 
with  Paris,  its  most  impressive  trait  is  its  lack  of  that 
organic  quality  which  results  from  variety  of  types. 
Thus  compared,  it  seems  to  have  only  the  vai'iety  of 
individuals  which  results  in  monotony.  It  is  the 
difference  between  noise  and  music.  Pictorially,  the 
general  aspect  of  New  York  is  such  that  the  mind 
speedily  takes  refuge  in  insensitiveness.  Its  expan- 
siveness  seeks  exercise  in  other  directions — business, 
dissipation,  study,  sestheticism,  politics.  The  life  of 
the  senses  is  no  longer  possible.  This  is  why  one's 
sense  for  art  is  so  stimulated  by  going  abroad,  and 
one's  sense  for  art  in  its  freest,  frankest,  most  uni- 
versal and  least  special,  intense  and  enervated  de- 
velopment,is  especially  exhilarated  by  going  to  Paris. 
It  is  why,  too,  on  one's  return  one  can  note  the  grad- 
ual decline  of  his  sensitiveness,  his  severity — the 
progressive  atrophy  of  a  sense  no  longer  called  into 
exercise.  "  I  had  no  conception  before,"  said  a 
Chicago  broker  to  me  one  day  in  Paris,  with  intelli- 
gent eloquence,  "  of  a  finished  city  !  "  Chicago  un- 
doubtedly presents  a  greater  contrast  to  Paris  than 
does  New  York,  and  so,  perhaps,  better  prepares 
one  to  appreciate  the  Parisian  quality,  but  the  re- 
turned New  Yorker  cannot  fail  to  be  deeply  im- 
pressed with  the  finish,  the  organic  perfection,  the 
elegance,  and  reserve  of  the  Paris  mirrored  in  his 


386  FRENCH  TRAITS 

memory.  Is  it  possible  that  the  uniformity,  the 
monotony  of  Paris  architecture,  the  prose  note  in 
Parisian  taste,  should  once  have  weighed  upon  his 
spirit  ?  Riding  once  on  the  top  of  a  Paris  tramway, 
betraying  an  understanding  of  English  by  reading 
an  American  newspaper,  that  sub-consciousness  of 
moral  isolation  which  the  foreigner  feels  in  Paris  as 
elsewhere,  was  suddenly  and  completely  destroyed  by 
my  next  neighbor,  who  remarked  with  contemptuous 
conviction  and  a  Manhattan  accent :  "  When  you've 
seen  one  block  of  this  infernal  town  you've  seen  it 
all  I "  He  felt  sure  of  sympathy  in  advance.  Prob- 
ably few  New  Yorkers  would  have  diflfered  with  him. 
The  universal  light  stone  and  brown  paint,  the  wide 
sidewalks,  the  asphalt  pavement,  the  indefinitely 
multiplied  kiosks,  the  prevalence  of  a  few  marked 
kinds  of  vehicles,  the  uniformed  workmen  and  work- 
women, the  infinite  reduplication,  in  a  word,  of 
easily  recognized  types,  is  at  first  mistaken  by  the 
New  Yorker  for  that  dead  level  of  uniformity  which 
is,  of  all  things  in  the  world,  the  most  tiresome  to 
him  in  his  own  city.  After  a  time,  however,  he  be- 
gins to  realize  three  important  facts :  In  the  first 
place  these  phenomena,  which  so  vividly  force  them- 
selves on  his  notice  that  their  reduplication  strikes 
him  more  than  their  qualities,  are  nevertheless  of  a 
quality  altogether  unexampled  in  his  experience  for 
fitness  and  agreeableness  ;  in  the  second  place  they 
are  details  of  a  whole,  members  of  an  organism,  and 
not  they,  but  the  city  which  they  compose,  the  "  fin- 


NEW   YORK   AFTER  PARIS  387 

ished  city  "  of  the  acute  Chicagoan,  is  the  spectacle  ; 
in  the  third  place  they  serve  as  a  background  for 
the  finest  group  of  monuments  in  the  world.  On 
his  return  he  perceives  these  things  with  a  melan- 
choly a  non  lucendo  luminousness.  The  dead  level  of 
Murray  Hill  uniformity  he  finds  the  most  agreeable 
asi^ect  in  the  city. 

And  the  reason  is  that  Paris  has  habituated  him  to 
the  exquisite,  the  rational,  pleasure  to  be  derived 
from  that  organic  spectacle  a  "finished  city,"  far 
more  than  that  Murray  Hill  is  respectable  and 
appropriate,  and  that  almost  any  other  prospect,  ex- 
cept in  spots  of  very  limited  area  which  emphasize 
the  surrounding  ugliness,  is  acutely  displeasing. 
This  latter  is  certainly  very  true.  We  have  long 
frankly  reproached  ourselves  with  having  no  art  com- 
mensurate with  our  distinction  in  other  activities, 
resignedly  attributing  the  lack  to  our  hitherto  ne- 
cessary material  preoccupation.  But  what  we  are 
really  accounting  for  in  this  way  is  our  lack  of 
Titians  and  Bramantes.  We  are  for  the  most  part 
quite  unconscious  of  the  character  of  the  American 
sesthetic  substratum,  so  to  speak.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
we  do  far  better  in  the  production  of  striking  artis- 
tic personalities  than  we  do  in  the  general  medium 
of  taste  and  culture.  We  figure  well  invariably  at 
the  Salon.  At  home  the  artist  is  simply  either 
driven  in  upon  himself,  or  else  awarded  by  a  naive 
clientele,  an  eminence  so  far  out  of  perspective  as  to 
result  unfortunately  both  for  him  and  for  the  com- 


388  FRENCH  TRAITS 

munity.  He  pleases  himself,  follows  his  own  bent, 
and  prefers  salience  to  conformability  for  his  work, 
because  his  chief  aim  is  to  make  an  ejQfect.  This  is 
especially  true  of  those  of  our  architects  who  have 
ideas.  But  these  are  the  exceptions,  of  course,  and 
the  general  aspect  of  the  city  is  characterized  by 
something  far  less  agreeable  than  mere  lack  of 
symmetry  ;  it  is  characterized  mainly  by  an  all-per- 
vading bad  taste  in  every  detail  into  which  the  ele- 
ment of  art  enters  or  should  enter — that  is  to  say, 
nearly  everything  that  meets  the  eye. 

However,  on  the  other  hand,  Parisian  uniformity 
may  depress  exuberance,  it  is  the  condition  and  often 
the  cause  of  the  omnipresent  good  taste.  Not  only 
is  it  true  that,  as  Mr.  Hamerton  remarks,  "  in  the 
better  quarters  of  the  city  a  building  hardly  ever 
rises  from  the  ground  unless  it  has  been  designed 
by  some  architect  who  knows  what  art  is,  and  endeav- 
ors to  apply  it  to  little  things  as  well  as  great ;"  but 
it  is  equally  true  that  the  national  sense  of  form  ex- 
presses itself  in  every  appurtenance  of  Ufe  as  well  as 
in  the  masses  and  details  of  architecture.  In  New 
York  our  noisy  diversity  not  only  prevents  any  effect 
of  ensemble  and  makes,  as  I  say,  the  old  common- 
place brown  stone  regions  the  most  reposeful  and 
rational  prospects  of  the  city,  but  it  precludes  also, 
in  a  thousand  activities  and  aspects,  the  operation  of 
that  salutary  constraint  and  conformity  without 
which  the  most  acutely  sensitive  individuality  in- 
evitably dccHnes  to  a  lower  level  of  form  and  taste 


NEW   YORK    AFTER  PARIS  889 

La  mode,  for  example,  seems  scarcely  to  exist  at  all ; 
or  at  any  rate  to  have  taken  refuge  in  the  chimney- 
pot hat  and  the  toumure.  The  dude,  it  is  true,  has 
been  developed  within  a  few  years,  but  his  distin- 
guishing trait  of  personal  extinction  has  had  much 
less  success  and  is  destined  to  a  much  shorter  life 
than  his  appellation,  which  has  wholly  lost  its  orig- 
inal significance  in  gaining  its  present  popularity. 
Every  woman  one  meets  in  the  street  has  a  different 
bonnet.  Every  street  car  contains  a  millinery  mu- 
seum. And  the  mass  of  them  may  be  judged  after 
the  circumstance  that  one  of  the  most  fashionable 
Fifth  Avenue  modistes  flaunts  a  sign  of  enduring 
brass  announcing  "  English  Round  Hats  and  Bon- 
nets." The  enormous  establishments  of  ready-made 
men's  clothing  seem  not  yet  to  have  made  their 
destined  impression  in  the  direction  of  uniform- 
ity. The  contrast  in  dress  of  the  working  classes 
with  those  of  Paris  is  as  conspicuously  unfortunate 
aesthetically,  as  poKtically  and  socially  it  may  be 
significant  ;  ocularly,  it  is  a  substitution  of  a  cheap, 
faded,  and  ragged  imitation  of  bourgeois  costume 
for  the  marvel  of  neatness  and  propriety  which  com- 
poses the  uniform  of  the  Parisian  ouvrier  and  ou- 
vri^re.  Broadway  below  Tenth  Street  is  a  forest  of 
signs  which  obscure  the  thoroughfare,  conceal  the 
buildings,  overhang  the  sidewalks,  and  exhibit  sev- 
erally and  collectively  a  taste  in  harmony  with  the 
Teutonic  and  Semitic  enterprise  which,  almost  exclu- 
sively, they  attest.  The  shop- windows'  show,  which  is 


390  FRENCH   TRAITS 

one  of  the  great  spectacles  of  Paris,  is  niggard  and 
shabby  ;  that  of  Philadelphia  has  considerably  more 
interest,  that  of  London  nearly  as  much.  Our  clumsy 
coinage  and  countrified  currency ;  our  eccentric 
book-bindings  ;  that  class  of  our  furniture  and  inte- 
rior decoration  which  may  be  described  as  American 
rococo  ;  that  multifariously  horrible  machinery  de- 
vised for  excluding  flies  from  houses  and  preventing 
them  from  alighting  on  dishes,  for  substituting  a 
draught  of  air  for  stifling  heat,  for  relieving  an  entire 
population  from  that  surplusage  of  old-fashioned 
Drfeediz>g  ip^olved  in  shutting  doors,  for  rolling  and 
rattling  cnange  in  /»hops,  for  enabling  you  to  "  put 
only  the  exact  fare  in  tne  box  ■  "  the  racket  of  pneu- 
matic tubes,  of  telephones,  of  ti^nal  traiw  :  the  prac- 
tice of  reticulating  pretentious  fayaAes  with  ^'•e- 
escapes  in  lieu  of  fire-proof  construction ;  the  vast 
mass  of  our  nickel-plated  paraphernalia ;  our  ziic 
cemetery  monuments ;  our  comic  valentines  and 
serious  Christmas  cards,  and  grocery  labels,  ani* 
"  fancy  "  job-printing  and  theatre  posters  ;  our  coi»- 
spicuous  cuspadores  and  our  conspicuous  need  of 
more  of  them  ;  the  "  tone  "  of  many  articles  in  opr 
most  popular  journals,  their  references  to  eachotiier, 
their  illustrations  ;  the  Sunday  panorama  of  shirt- 
sleeved  ease  and  the  week-day  fatigue  costume  of 
curl  papers  and  "  Mother  Hubbards  "  general  in 
some  quarters ;  our  sumptuous  new  bar-rooms,  deco- 
rated perhaps  on  the  principle  that  le  mauvais  goM 
mhneaucrime — all  these  phenomena,  the  list  of  which 


NEW   YORK   AFTER   PARIS  391 

might  be  indefinitely  extended,  are  so  many  wit- 
nesses of  a  general  taste,  public  and  private,  which 
differs  cardinally  from  that  prevalent  in  Paris. 

In  fine,  the  material  spectacle  of  New  York  is  such 
that  at  last,  with  some  anxiety,  one  turns  from  the  ex- 
ternal vileness  of  every  prospect  to  seek  solace  in  the 
pleasure  that  man  affords.  But  even  after  the  whole- 
some American  reaction  has  set  in,  and  your  appetite 
for  the  life  of  the  senses  is  starved  into  indifference 
for  what  begins  to  seem  to  you  an  unworthy  ideal ; 
after  you  are  patriotically  readjusted  and  feel  once 
more  the  elation  of  living  in  the  future  owing  to  the 
dearth  of  sustenance  in  the  present — you  are  still  at 
the  mercy  of  perceptions  too  keenly  sharpened  by 
your  Paris  sojourn  to  permit  blindness  to  the  fact 
that  Paris  and  New  York  contrast  as  strongly  in 
moral  atmosphere  as  in  material  aspect.  You  be-  ♦ 
come  contemplative,  and  speculate  pensively  as  to 
the  character  and  quality  of  those  native  and  normal 
conditions,  those  Relations,  which  finally  you  have 
definitely  resumed.  What  is  it — that  vague  and 
pervasive  moral  contrast  which  the  American  feels 
so  potently  on  his  return  from  abroad  ?  How  can 
we  define  that  apparently  undefinable  difference 
j^fhich  is  only  the  more  sensible  for  being  so  elu- 
sive ?  Book  after  book  has  been  written  about  Eu- 
rope from  the  American  standpoint — about  America 
from  the  European  standpoint.  None  of  them  has 
specified  what  everyone  has  experienced.  The  spec- 
tacular and  the  material  contrasts  are  easily  enough 


392  FRENCH  TRAIT8 

characterized,  and  it  is  only  the  unreflecting  or  the 
superficial  who  exaggerate  the  importance  of  them. 
We  are  by  no  means  at  the  mercy  of  our  apprecia- 
tion of  Parisian  spectacle,  of  the  French  machinery 
of  life.  We  miss  or  we  do  not  miss  the  Salon  Carre, 
the  view  of  the  south  transept  of  Notre  Dame  as 
one  descends  the  rue  St.  Jacques,  the  Theatre  Fran- 
9ais,  the  concerts,  the  Luxembourg  Gardens,  the 
excursions  to  the  score  of  charming  suburban 
places,  the  library  at  the  corner,  the  convenient 
cheap  cab,  the  manners  of  the  people,  the  quiet,  the 
cUmate,  the  constant  entertainment  of  the  senses. 
We  have  in  general  too  much  work  to  do  to  waste 
much  time  in  regretting  these  things.  In  general, 
work  is  by  natural  selection  so  invariable  a  concom- 
itant of  our  unrivalled  opportunity  to  work  profit- 
ably, that  it  absorbs  our  energies  so  far  as  this  pal- 
pable sphere  is  concerned.  But  what  is  it  that 
throughout  the  hours  of  busiest  work  and  closest 
application,  as  well  as  in  the  preceding  and  following 
moments  of  leisxu-e  and  the  occasional  intervals  of 
relaxation,  makes  everyone  vaguely  perceive  the  vast 
moral  difference  between  life  here  at  home  and  life 
abroad — notably  life  in  France  ?  What  is  the  subtle 
influence  pervading  the  moral  atmosphere  in  New 
York,  which  so  markedly  distinguishes  what  we 
call  life  here  from  life  in  Paris  or  even  in  Penne- 
depie  ? 

It  is,  I  think,  distinctly  traceable  to  the  intense  in- 
dividualism which  prevails  among  us.     Magnificent 


NEW    YORK   AFTER   PARIS  393 

results  have  followed  our  devotion  to  this  force  ;  in- 
con  testably,  we  have  spared  ourselves  both  the  acute 
and  the  chronic  misery  for  which  the  tyranny  of  so- 
ciety over  its  constituent  parts  is  directly  responsible. 
We  have,  moreover,  in  this  way  not  only  freed  our- 
selves from  the  tyranny  of  despotism,  such  for  ex- 
ample as  is  exerted  socially  in  England  and  politi- 
cally in  Russia,  but  we  have  undoubtedly  developed 
a  larger  number  of  self-reliant  and  potentially  ca- 
pable social  units  than  even  a  democratic  system  like 
that  of  France,  which  sacrifices  the  unit  to  the  or- 
ganism, succeeds  in  producing.  We  may  trvdy  say 
that,  material  as  we  are  accused  of  being,  we  turn 
out  more  men  than  any  other  nationality.  And  if 
some  Frenchman  points  out  that  we  attach  an  eso- 
toric  sense  to  the  term  "  man,"  and  that  at  any  rate 
our  men  are  not  better  adapted  than  some  others  to 
a  civilized  environment  which  demands  other  quali- 
ties than  honesty,  energy,  and  intelligence,  we  may 
be  quite  content  to  leave  him  his  objection,  and  to 
prefer  what  seems  to  us  manliness,  to  civilization  it- 
self. At  the  same  time  we  cannot  pretend  that  in- 
dividualism has  done  everything  for  us  that  could 
be  desired.  In  giving  us  the  man  it  has  robbed  us 
of  the  milieu.  Morally  speaking,  the  milieu,  with  us 
scarcely  exists.  Our  difference  from  Europe  does 
not  consist  in  the  difference  between  the  European 
milieu  and  ours  ;  it  consists  in  the  fact  that,  com- 
paratively speaking  of  course,  we  have  no  milieu. 
If  we  are  individually  developed,  we  are  also  indi- 


394  FRENCH  TRAITS 

vidually  isolated  to  a  degree  elsewhere  unknown. 
Politically  we  have  parties  who,  in  Cicero's  phrase, 
"  think  the  same  things  concerning  the  republic," 
but  concerning  very  little  else  are  we  agreed  in  any 
mass  of  any  moment  The  number  of  our  sauces  is 
growing,  but  there  is  no  corresponding  diminution 
in  the  number  of  our  religions.  We  have  no  com- 
munities. Our  villages  even  are  apt,  rather,  to  be 
aggregations.  Politics  aside,  there  is  hardly  an 
American  view  of  any  phenomenon  or  class  of  phe- 
nomena. Everyone  of  us  likes,  reads,  sees,  does 
what  he  chooses.  Often  dissimilarity  is  affected  as 
adding  piquancy  of  paradox.  The  judgment  of  the 
ages,  the  consensus  of  mankind,  exercise  no  tyranny 
over  the  individual  wiU.  Do  you  believe  in  this  or 
that,  do  you  like  this  or  that,  are  questions  which, 
concerning  the  most  fundamental  matters,  neverthe- 
less form  the  staple  of  conversation  in  many  circles. 
We  live  all  of  us  apparently  in  a  divine  state  of  flux. 
The  question  asked  at  dinner  by  a  lady  in  a  neigh- 
boring city  of  a  literary  stranger,  "  What  do  you  think 
of  Shakespeare  ?  "  is  not  exaggeratedly  peculiar.  We 
all  think  differently  of  Shakespeare,  of  Cromwell,  of 
Titian,  of  Browning,  of  George  Washington.  Con- 
cerning matters  as  to  which  we  must  be  fundament- 
ally disinterested,  we  permit  ourselves  not  only  preju- 
dice but  passion.  At  the  most  we  have  here  and 
there  groups  of  personal  acquaintance  only,  whose 
members  are  in  accord  in  regard  to  some  one  thing, 
and  quickly  crystallize  and  precipitate  at  the  men- 


NEW   YORK   AFTER  PARIS  395 

tion  of  something  that  is  really  a  corollary  of  the 
force  which  unites  them.  The  efforts  that  have  been 
made  in  New  York,  within  the  past  twenty  years,  to 
establish  various  special  milieus,  so  to  speak,  have 
been  pathetic  in  their  number  and  resultlessness. 
Efforts  of  this  sort  are  of  course  doomed  to  failure, 
because  the  essential  trait  of  the  milieu  is  sponta- 
neous existence,  but  their  failure  discloses  the  mu- 
tual repulsion  which  keeps  the  molecules  of  our  so- 
ciety from  uniting.  How  can  it  be  otherwise  when 
life  is  so  speculative,  so  experimental,  so  wholly  de- 
pendent on  the  personal  force  and  idiosyncrasies  of 
the  individual  ?  How  shall  we  accept  any  general 
verdict  pronounced  by  persons  of  no  more  authority 
than  ourselves,  and  arrived  at  by  processes  in  which 
we  are  equally  expert  ?  We  have  so  little  consensus 
as  to  anything,  because  we  dread  the  loss  of  person- 
ality involved  in  submitting  to  conventions,  and  be- 
cause personality  operates  centrifugally  alone.  We 
make  exceptions  in  favor  of  such  matters  as  the  Co- 
pemican  system  and  the  greatness  of  our  own  future. 
There  are  things  which  we  take  on  the  credit  of  the 
consensus  of  authorities,  for  which  we  may  not  have 
all  the  proofs  at  hand.  But  as  to  conventions  of  all 
sorts,  our  attitude  is  apt  to  be  one  of  suspicion  and 
uncertainty.  Mark  Twain,  for  example,  first  won 
his  way  to  the  popular  American  heart  by  exposing 
the  humbugs  of  the  Cinque-cento.  Specifically  the 
most  teachable  of  people,  nervously  eager  for  infor- 
mation, Americans  are  nevertheless  wholly  distrust- 


396  FRENCH   TRAITS 

ful  of  generalizations  made  by  anyone  else,  and  little 
disposed  to  receive  blindly  formularies  and  classifi- 
cations of  phenomena  as  to  which  they  have  had  no 
experience.  And  of  experience  we  have  necessarily 
had,  except  politically,  less  than  any  civilized  people 
in  the  world. 

We  are  infinitely  more  at  home  amid  universal 
mobility.  We  want  to  act,  to  exert  ourselves,  to 
be,  as  we  imagine,  nearer  to  nature.  We  have  our 
tastes  in  painting  as  in  confectionery.  Some  of  us 
prefer  Tintoretto  to  Rembrandt,  as  we  do  chocolate 
to  cocoanut.  In  respect  of  taste  it  would  be  impos- 
sible for  the  gloomiest  sceptic  to  deny  that  this  is 
an  exceedingly  free  country.  "  I  don't  know  any- 
thing about  the  subject  (whatever  the  subject  may 
be),  but  I  know  what  I  like,"  is  a  remark  which  is 
heard  on  every  hand,  and  which  witnesses  the  sturdi- 
ness  of  our  struggle  against  the  tyranny  of  conven- 
tions and  the  indomitable  nature  of  our  independ- 
ent spirit.  In  criticism  the  individual  spirit  fairly 
runs  a-muck ;  it  takes  its  lack  of  concurrence  as 
credentials  of  impartiality  often.  In  constructive 
art  everyone  is  occupied  less  with  nature  than  with 
the  point  of  view.  Mr.  Howells  himself  displays 
more  dehght  in  his  naturalistic  attitude  than  zest 
in  his  execution,  which,  compared  with  that  of  the 
French  naturalists,  is  in  general  faint-hearted 
enough.  Everyone  writes,  paints,  models,  exclu- 
sively the  point  of  view.  Fidelity  in  following  out 
nature's  suggestions,  in  depicting  the  emotions  nat* 


NEW   YORK    AFTER   PARIS  397 

ure  arouses,  a  sympathetic  submission  to  nature's 
sentiment,  absorption  into  nature's  moods  and  sub- 
tle enfoldings,  are  extremely  rare.  The  artist's  eye 
is  fixed  on  the  treatment.  He  is  "creative  "  by  main 
strength.  He  is  penetrated  with  a  desire  to  get 
away  from  "the  same  old  thing,"  to  "  take  it"  in  a 
new  way,  to  draw  attention  to  himself,  to  shine. 
One  would  say  that  every  American  nowadays  who 
handles  a  brush  or  designs  a  building,  was  stimu- 
lated by  the  secret  ambition  of  founding  a  schooL 
We  have  in  art  thus,  with  a  vengeance,  that  per- 
sonal element  which  is  indeed  its  savor,  but  which 
it  is  fatal  to  make  its  substance.  We  have  it  still 
more  conspicuously  in  life.  What  do  you  think  of 
him,  or  her?  is  the  first  question  asked  after  every 
introduction.  Of  every  new  individual  we  meet  we 
foi-m  instantly  some  personal  impression.  The  criti- 
cism of  character  is  nearly  the  one  disinterested 
activity  in  which  we  have  become  expert.  We  have 
for  this  a  peculiar  gift,  apparently,  which  we  share 
with  gypsies  and  money-lenders,  and  other  people 
in  whom  the  social  instinct  is  chiefly  latent.  Our 
gossip  takes  on  the  character  of  personal  judgments 
rather  than  of  tittle-tattle.  It  concerns  not  what 
So-and-So  has  done,  but  what  kind  of  a  person  So- 
and-So  is.  It  would  hardly  be  too  much  to  say  that 
So-and-So  never  leaves  a  group  of  which  he  is  not 
an  intimate  without  being  immediately,  impartially 
but  fundamentally,  discussed.  To  a  degree  not  at  all 
suspected  by  the  author  of  the  phrase,  he  "leaver 


398  FRENCH  TRAITS 

his  character  "  with  them  on  quitting  any  assem- 
blage of  his  acquaintance. 

The  great  difficulty  with  our  individuality  and 
independence  is  that  diflferentiation  begins  so  soon 
and  stops  so  far  short  of  real  importance.  In  no 
department  of  life  has  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest,  that  principle  in  virtue  of  whose  operation 
societies  become  distinguished  and  admirable,  had 
time  to  work.  Our  social  characteristics  are  in- 
ventions, discoveries,  not  survival.  Nothing  with 
us  has  passed  into  the  stage  of  instinct.  And  for 
this  reason  some  of  our  "  best  people,"  some  of  the 
most  "thoughtful"  among  us,  have  less  of  that 
quality  best  characterized  as  social  maturity  than  a 
Parisian  washerwoman  or  concierge.  Centuries  of 
sifting,  ages  of  gravitation  toward  harmony  and 
homogeneity,  have  resulted  for  the  French  in  a 
delightful  immunity  from  the  necessity  of  "proving 
all  things "  remorselessly  laid  on  every  individual 
of  our  society.  Very  many  matters,  at  any  rate, 
which  to  the  French  are  matters  of  course,  our  self- 
respect  pledges  us  to  a  personal  examination  of. 
The  idea  of  sparing  ourselves  trouble  in  thinking 
occurs  to  us  far  more  rarely  than  to  other  peoples. 
We  have  certainly  an  insufficient  notion  of  the  su- 
perior results  reached  by  economy  and  system  in 
this  respect. 

In  one  of  'Mr.  Henry  James's  cleverest  sketches, 
"  Lady  Barberina,"  the  English  heroine  marries  an 
American  and  comes  to  live  in  New  York.   She  finds 


NEW   YORK   AFTER  PARIS  399 

it  dull.  She  is  homesick  without  quite  knowing 
why.  Mr.  James  is  at  his  best  in  exhibiting  at  once 
the  intensity  of  her  disgust  and  the  intangibility  of 
its  provocation.  We  are  not  all  like  "  Lady  Barb." 
"We  do  not  all  like  London,  whose  materialism  is 
only  more  splendid,  not  less  uncompromising  than 
our  own  ;  but  we  cannot  help  perceiving  that  what 
that  unfortunate  lady  missed  in  New  York  was  the 
milieu — an  environment  sufficiently  developed  to 
permit  spontaneity  and  free  play  of  thought  and 
feeling,  and  a  certain  domination  of  shifting  merit 
by  fixed  relations  which  keeps  one's  mind  off  that 
disagreeable  subject  of  contemplation,  one's  self. 
Everyone  seems  acutely  self-conscious  ;  and  the  self- 
consciousness  of  the  unit  is  fatal,  of  course,  to  the 
composure  of  the  ensemble.  The  number  of  people 
intently  minding  their  P's  and  Q's,  reforming  their 
orthoepy,  practising  new  discoveries  in  etiquette, 
making  over  their  names,  and  in  general  exhibiting 
that  activity  of  the  amateur  known  as  "  going 
through  the  motions  "  to  the  end  of  bringing  them- 
selves up,  as  it  were,  is  very  noticeable  in  contrast 
with  French  oblivion  to  this  kind  of  personal  exer- 
tion. Even  our  simplicity  is  apt  to  be  simplesse. 
And  the  conscientiousness  in  educating  others  dis- 
played by  those  who  are  so  fortunate  as  to  have 
reached  perfection  nearly  enough  to  permit  relaxa- 
tion in  self -improvement,  is  only  equalled  by  the 
avidity  in  acquisitiveness  displayed  by  the  learners 
themselves.    Meantime  the  composure  born  of  equal- 


400  FRENCH   TRAITS 

ity,  as  well  as  that  springing  from  unconsciousness^ 
suffers.  Our  society  is  a  kind  of  Jacob's  ladder, 
to  maintain  equilibrium  upon  which  requires  an 
amount  of  effort  on  the  part  of  the  personally  es- 
timable gymnasts  perpetually  ascending  and  de- 
scending, in  the  highest  degree  hostile  to  spontane- 
ity, to  serenity,  and  stability. 

Naturally,  thus,  everyone  is  personally  preoccu- 
pied to  a  degree  unknown  in  France.  And  it  is 
not  necessary  that  this  preoccupation  should  con- 
cern any  side  of  that  multifarious  monster  we  know 
as  "  business."  It  may  relate  strictly  to  the  para- 
dox of  seeking  employment  for  leisure.  Even  the 
latter  is  a  terribly  conscious  proceeding.  We  go 
about  it  with  a  mental  deliberateness  singularly  in 
contrast  with  o\ir  physical  precipitancy.  But  it 
is  mainly  "business,"  perhaps,  that  accentuates 
our  individuahsm.  The  condition  of  desceuvre- 
ment  is  positively  disreputable.  It  arouses  the  sus- 
picion of  acquaintance  and  the  anxiety  of  friends. 
Occupation  to  the  end  of  money-getting  is  our  nor- 
mal condition,  any  variation  from  which  demands 
explanation,  as  little  likely  to  be  entirely  honor- 
able. Such  occupation  is,  as  I  said,  the  inevitable 
sequence  of  the  opportunity  for  it,  and  is  the  wiser 
and  more  dignified  because  of  its  necessity  to  the 
end  of  securing  independence.  What  the  French- 
man can  secure  merely  by  the  exercise  of  economy 
is  with  us  only  the  reward  of  energy  and  enterprise 
in   acquisition — so    comparatively  speculative  and 


NEW   YORK   AFTER  PARIS  401 

hazardous  is  the  condition  of  our  business.  And 
whereas  with  us  money  is  far  harder  to  keep,  and  is 
moreover  something  which  it  is  far  harder  to  be 
without  than  is  the  case  in  France,  the  ends  of 
self-respect,  freedom  from  mortification,  and  getting 
the  most  out  of  Hfe,  demand  that  we  should  take 
constant  advantage  of  the  fact  that  it  is  easier  to 
get.  Consequently  everyone  who  is,  as  we  say, 
worth  anything,  is  with  us  adjusted  to  the  prodigi- 
ous dynamic  condition  which  characterizes  our  ex- 
istence. And  such  occupation  is  tremendously  ab- 
sorbing. Our  opportunity  is  fatally  handicapped 
by  this  remorseless  necessity  of  embracing  it.  It 
yields  us  fruit  after  its  kind,  but  it  rigorously  ex- 
cludes us  from  tasting  any  other.  Everyone  is  en- 
gaged in  preparing  the  working  drawings  of  his  own 
fortune.  There  is  no  co-operation  possible,  because 
competition  is  the  life  of  enterprise. 

In  the  resultant  manners  the  city  illustrates  Car- 
lyle's  "anarchy  plus  the  constable."  Never  was  the 
struggle  for  existence  more  palpable,  more  naked, 
and  more  unpictoriaL  "It  is  the  art  of  mankind  to 
polish  the  world,"  says  Thoreau  somewhere,  "  and 
everyone  who  works  is  scrubbing  in  some  part." 
Everyone  certainly  is  here  at  work,  yet  was  there  ever 
such  scrubbing  with  so  little  resultant  polish  ?  The 
disproportion  would  be  tragic  if  it  were  not  gro- 
tesque. Amid  all  "  the  hurry  and  nish  of  life  along 
the  sidewalks,"  as  the  newspapers  say,  one  might 
surely  expect  to  find  the  unexpected.  The  spec- 
26 


402  FRENCH  TRAITS 

tacle  ought  certainly  to  have  the  interest  of  pic* 
turesqueness  which  is  inherent  in  the  fortuitous. 
Unhappily,  though  there  is  hurry  and  rush  enough, 
it  is  the  bustle  of  business,  not  the  dynamics  of 
what  is  properly  to  be  called  life.  The  elements  of 
the  picture  lack  dignity — so  completely  as  to  leave 
the  ensemble  quite  without  accent.  More  incidents 
in  the  drama  of  real  Hfe  will  happen  before  midnight 
to  the  individuals  who  compose  the  orderly  Boule- 
vard procession  in  Paris  than  those  of  its  chaotic 
Broadway  counterpart  will  experience  in  a  month. 
The  latter  are  not  really  more  impressive  because 
they  are  apparently  all  running  errands  and  include 
no  Jldneurs.  The  Jidneur  would  fare  ill  should  any- 
thing draw  him  into  the  stream.  Every  tiling  being 
adjusted  to  the  motive  of  looking  out  for  one's  self, 
any  of  the  sidewalk  civility  and  mutual  interest  which 
obtain  in  Paris  would  throw  the  entire  machine  out 
of  gear.  Whoever  is  not  in  a  hurry  is  in  the  way. 
A  man  running  after  an  omnibus  at  the  IVIadeleine 
would  come  into  collision  with  fewer  people  and 
cause  less  disturbance  than  one  who  should  stop  on 
Fourteenth  Street  to  apologize  for  an  inadvertent 
jostle,  or  to  give  a  lady  any  surplusage  of  passing 
room.  He  would  be  less  ridiculoua  A  friend  re- 
cently returned  from  Paris  told  me  that,  on  several 
street  occasions,  his  involuntary  "  Excuse  me  !  "  had 
been  mistaken  for  a  salutation  and  answered  by  a 
"How  do  you  do?"  and  a  stare  of  speculation. 
Apologies  of  this  class  sound  to  us,  perhaps,  like  a 


NEW   YORK    AFTJ<:R   PARIS  403 

subtle  and  deprecatory  impeachment  of  our  large 
tolerance  and  universal  good  nature. 

In  this  way  our  undoubted  self-respect  undoubt- 
edly loses  something  of  its  bloom.  We  may  prefer 
being  jammed  into  street-cars  and  pressed  against 
the  platform  rails  of  the  elevated  road  to  the  tedious 
waiting  at  Paris  'bus  stations — to  mention  one  of  the 
perennial  and  principal  points  of  contrast  which  mo- 
nopolize the  thoughts  of  the  average  American  so- 
journer in  the  French  capital.  But  it  is  terribly 
vulgarizing.  The  contact  and  pressure  are  abomin- 
able. To  a  Parisian  the  daily  experience  in  this  re- 
spect of  those  of  our  women  who  have  no  carriages 
of  their  own,  would  seem  as  singular  as  the  latter 
would  find  the  Oriental  habit  of  regarding  the  face 
as  more  important  than  other  portions  of  the  fe- 
male person  to  keep  concealed.  But  neither  men 
nor  women  can  persist  in  blushing  at  the  inti- 
macy of  rudeness  to  which  our  crowding  subjects 
them  in  common.  The  only  resource  is  in  blunted 
sensibility.  And  the  manners  thus  negatively  pro- 
duced we  do  not  quite  appreciate  in  their  enormity 
i)ecause  the  edge  of  our  appreciation  is  thus  neces- 
sarily dulled.  The  conductor  scarcely  ceases  whist- 
ling to  poke  you  for  your  fare.  Other  whistlers 
apparently  go  on  forever.  Loud  talking  follows 
naturally  from  the  impossibility  of  personal  se- 
clusion in  the  presence  of  others.  Our  Sundays 
have  lost  secular  decorum  very  much  in  proportion 
as  they  have  lost  Puritan  observance.     F  ve  hav^ 


404  FRENCH   TRAITS 

nothing  quite  comparable  with  a  London  bank  holi- 
day, or  with  the  conduct  of  the  popular  cohorts  of 
the  Epsom  army;  if  only  in  "political  picnics" 
and  the  excursions  of  "gangs  "of  "toughs  "we  il- 
lustrate absolute  barbarism,  it  is  nevertheless  true 
that,  from  Central  Park  to  Coney  Island,  our  peo- 
ple exhibit  a  conception  of  the  fitting  employment  of 
periodical  leisure  which  would  seem  indecorous  to  a 
crowd  of  Belleville  ouvriers.  If  we  have  not  the  cad, 
we  certainly  possess  in  abundance  the  species  "  hood- 
lum," which,  though  morally  far  more  refreshing, 
is  yet  aesthetically  intolerable  ;  and  the  hoodlum  is 
nearly  as  rare  in  Paris  as  the  cad.  Owing  to  his 
presence  and  to  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  thrives, 
we  find  ourselves,  in  spite  of  the  most  determined 
democratic  convictions,  shunning  crowds  whenever 
it  is  possible  to  shun  them.  The  most  robust  of  us 
easily  get  into  the  frame  of  mind  of  a  Boston  young 
womaii,  to  whom  the  Champs- Iilly sees  looked  like  a 
railway  station,  and  who  wished  the  people  would  get 
up  from  the  benches  and  go  home.  Our  life  becomes 
a  life  of  the  interior ;  wherefore,  in  spite  of  a  cHmate 
that  permits  walks  abroad,  we  confine  out-door  exist- 
ence to  Newport  lawns  and  camps  in  the  Adiron- 
dacks ;  and  whence  proceeds  that  carelessness  of  the 
exterior  which  subordinates  architecture  to  "house- 
hold art,"  and  makes  of  our  streets  such  mere  thor- 
oughfares lined  with  "homes." 

The  manners  one  encounters  in  street  and  shop 
in  Paris  ar«,  it  is  well  known,  very  diflferent  from 


NEW   YORK   AFTER   PARIS  405 

our  own.  But  no  praise  of  them  ever  quite  prepares 
an  American  for  their  agreeableness  and  simplicity. 
We  are  always  agreeably  surprised  at  the  absence  of 
elaborate  manner  which  eulogists  of  French  manners 
in  general  omit  to  note  ;  and  indeed  it  is  an  ex- 
tremely elusive  quality.  Nothing  is  further  removed 
from  that  intrusion  of  the  national  gemUthlichkeit  into 
so  impersonal  a  matter  as  affairs,  large  or  small, 
which  to  an  occasional  sense  makes  the  occasional 
German  manner  enjoyable.  Nothing  is  farther  from 
the  obsequiousness  of  the  London  shopman,  which 
rather  dazes  the  American  than  pleases  him.  Noth- 
ing, on  the  other  hand,  is  farther  from  our  own  bald 
despatch.  With  us  every  shopper  expects,  or  at 
any  rate  is  prepared  for,  obstruction  rather  than  fa- 
cilitation on  the  seller's  side.  The  drygoods  coun- 
ter, especially  when  the  attendant  is  of  the  gentler 
sex,  is  a  kind  of  chevaux-de-frise.  The  retail  atmo- 
sphere is  charged  with  an  affectation  of  unconscious- 
ness ;  not  only  is  every  transaction  impersonal,  it  is 
mechanical ;  ere  long  it  must  become  automatic.  In 
many  cases  there  is  to  be  encountered  a  certain  de- 
fiant attitude  to  the  last  degree  unhappy  in  its  ef- 
fects on  the  manners  involved — a  certain  self-asser- 
tion which  begs  the  question,  else  unmooted,  of  so- 
cial equality,  with  the  result  for  tke  time  being  of 
the  most  unsocial  relation  probably  existing  among 
men.  Perfect  personal  equality  for  the  time  being 
invariably  exists  between  customer  and  tradesman 
in  France  ;  the  man  or  woman  who  serves  you  is  first 


406  FRENCH   TRAITS 

of  all  a  fellow-creature  ;  a  shop,  to  be  sure,  is  not  a 
conversazione,  but  if  you  are  in  a  loquacious  or  in- 
quisitive mood  you  will  be  deemed  neither  fiivolous 
nor  familiar — nor  yet  an  inanimate  obstacle  to  the 
flow  of  the  most  important  as  well  as  the  most  im- 
petuous of  the  currents  of  life. 

Certainly,  in  New  York,  we  are  too  vain  of  our  bus- 
tle to  realize  how  mannerless  and  motiveless  it  is. 
The  essence  of  life  is  movement,  but  so  is  the  essence 
of  epilepsy.  Moreover  the  life  of  the  New  Yorker 
who  chases  street-cars,  eats  at  a  lunch  counter, 
drinks  what  will  "  take  hold  "  quickly  at  a  bar  he 
can  quit  instantly,  reads  only  the  head-lines  of  his 
newspaper,  keeps  abreast  of  the  intellectual  move- 
ment by  inspecting  the  display  of  the  Elevated  Rail- 
way news-stands  while  he  fumes  at  having  to  wait 
two  minutes  for  his  train,  hastily  buys  his  tardy 
ticket  of  sidewalk  speculators,  and  leaves  the  theatre 
as  if  it  were  on  fire — the  life  of  such  a  man  is,  not- 
withstanding all  its  futile  activity,  varied  by  long 
spaces  of  absolute  mental  stagnation,  of  moral  coma. 
Not  only  is  our  hurry  not  decorous,  not  decent  ;  it 
is  not  real  activity,  it  is  as  little  as  possible  like  the 
animated  existence  of  Paris,  where  the  moral  nature 
is  kept  in  constant  operation,  intense  or  not  as  the 
case  may  be,  in  spite  of  the  external  and  material 
tranquillity.  Owing  to  this  lack  of  a  real,  a  rational 
activity,  our  individual  civilization,  which  seems  when 
successful  a  scramble,  and  when  unlucky  a  sauve  qui 
pent,  is,  morally  as  well  as  spectacularly,  not  ill  de- 


NEW   YORK   AFTER   PARIS  407 

scribed  in  so  far  as  its  external  aspect  is  concerned 
by  the  epithet  ^<.  Enervation  seems  to  menace 
those  whom  hyperaesthesia  spares. 

"  We  go  to  Europe  to  become  Americanized,* 
says  Emerson,  but  France  Americanizes  us  less  in 
this  sense  than  any  other  country  of  Europe,  and 
perhaps  Emerson  was  not  thinking  so  much  of  her 
democratic  development  into  social  order  and  effi- 
ciency as  of  the  less  American  and  more  feudal 
European  influences,  which  do  indeed,  while  we  are 
subject  to  them,  intensify  our  affection  for  our  own 
institutions,  our  confidence  in  our  own  outlook.  One 
must  admit  that  in  France  (which  nowadays  follows 
our  ideal  of  liberty  perhaps  as  closely  as  we  do  hers 
of  equality  and  fraternity,  and  where  consequently 
our  political  notions  receive  few  shocks)  not  only  is 
the  life  of  the  senses  more  agreeable  than  it  is  with 
us,  but  the  mutual  relations  of  men  are  more  felici- 
tous also.  And  alas  !  Americans  who  have  savored 
these  sweets  cannot  avail  themselves  of  the  implica- 
tion contained  in  Emerson's  further  woi'ds — words 
which  approach  nearer  to  petulance  than  anything 
in  his  urbane  and  placid  utterances — "those  who 
prefer  London  or  Paris  to  America  may  be  spared 
to  return  to  those  capitals."  "  II  faut  vivre,  com- 
battre,  et  finir  avec  les  sieus,"  says  Doudan,  and  no 
law  is  more  inexorable.  The  fruits  of  foreign  gar- 
dens are,  however  delectable,  enchanted  for  us ; 
we  may  not  touch  them  ;  and  to  pass  our  lives  in 


408  FRENCH  TRAITS 

covetous  inspection  of  them  is  as  barren  a  perform- 
ance as  may  be  imagined.  For  this  reason  the  ques- 
tion "  Should  you  like  better  to  live  here  or  abroad?  " 
is  as  little  practical  as  it  is  frequent.  The  empty 
life  of  the  "  foreign  colonies  "  in  Paris  is  its  sufficient 
answer.  Not  only  do  most  of  us  have  to  stay  at 
home,  but  for  everyone  except  the  inconsiderable 
few  who  can  better  do  abroad  the  work  they  have  to 
do,  and  except  those  essentially  un-American  waifs 
who  can  contrive  no  work  for  themselves,  life  abroad 
is  not  only  less  profitable  but  less  pleasant.  The 
American  endeavoring  to  acclimatize  himself  in  Paris 
hardly  needs  to  have  cited  to  him  the  words  of 
Epictetus  :  "  Man,  thou  hast  forgotten  thine  object ; 
thy  journey  was  not  to  this,  but  through  this  " — he  is 
sure  before  long  to  become  dismally  persuaded  of 
their  truth.  More  speedily  than  elsewhere  perhaps, 
he  finds  out  in  Paris  the  truth  of  Carlyle's  assur- 
ance :  "  It  is,  after  all,  the  one  unhappiness  of  a  man. 
That  he  cannot  work  ;  that  he  cannot  get  his  destiny 
as  a  man  fulfilled."  For  the  work  which  insures  the 
felicity  of  the  French  life  of  the  senses  and  of 
French  human  relations  he  cannot  share  ;  and,  thus, 
the  question  of  the  relative  attractiveness  of  French 
and  American  life — of  Paris  and  New  York — be- 
comes the  idle  and  purely  speculative  question  as 
to  whether  one  would  like  to  change  his  personal 
and  national  identity. 

And  this  an  American  may  permit  himself  the 
chauvinism  of  believing  a  less  rational  contradiction 


NEW   YORK   AFTER   PARIS  409 

of  instinct  in  himself  than  it  would  be  in  the  case  of 
anyone  else.  And  for  this  reason  :  that  in  those  ele- 
ments of  life  which  tend  to  the  development  and 
perfection  of  the  individual  soul  in  the  work  of  ful- 
filling its  mysterious  destiny,  American  character  and 
American  conditions  are  especially  rich.  Bunyan's 
genius  exhibits  its  characteristic  felicity  in  giving 
the  name  of  Hopeful  to  the  successor  of  that  Faith- 
ful who  perished  in  the  town  of  Vanity.  It  would 
be  a  mark  of  that  loose  complacency  in  which  we 
are  too  often  offenders,  to  associate  the  scene  of  Faith- 
ful's martyrdom  with  the  Europe  from  which  defin- 
itively we  set  out  afresh  a  century  ago ;  but  it  is 
impossible  not  to  recognize  that  on  our  forward 
journey  to  the  celestial  country  of  national  and 
individual  success,  our  conspicuous  inspiration  and 
constant  comforter  is  that  hope  whose  cheering 
ministrations  the  "  weary  Titans  "  of  Europe  enjoy 
in  far  narrower  measure.  Living  in  the  future  has 
an  indisputably  tonic  effect  upon  the  moral  sinews, 
and  contributes  an  exhilaration  to  the  spirit  which 
no  sense  of  attainment  and  achieved  success  can  give. 
We  are  after  all  the  true  idealists  of  the  world. 
Material  as  are  the  details  of  our  preoccupation,  our 
sub-consciousness  is  sustained  by  a  general  aspira- 
tion that  is  none  the  less  heroic  for  being,  perhaps, 
somewhat  nwif  as  well.  Tlie  times  and  moods  when 
one's  energy  is  excited,  when  something  occurs  in 
the  continuous  drama  of  life  to  bring  sharply  into 
relief  its  vivid  interest  and  one's  own  intimate  share 


410  FRENCH  TRAITS 

therein,  when  nature  seems  infinitely  more  real  than 
the  societies  she  includes,  when  the  missionary, 
the  pioneer,  the  constructive  spirit  is  aroused,  are 
far  more  frequent  with  us  than  with  other  peoples. 
Our  intense  individualism  happily  modified  by  our 
equality,  our  constant,  active,  multiform  struggle 
with  the  environment,  do  at  least,  as  I  said,  pro- 
duce men  ;  and  if  we  use  the  term  in  an  esoteric 
sense  we  at  least  know  its  significance.  Of  our 
riches  in  this  respect  New  York  alone  certainly 
gives  no  exaggerated  idea — however  it  may  other- 
wise epitomize  and  typify  our  national  traits.  A 
walk  on  Pennsylvania  Avenue  ;  a  drive  among  the 
"  homes  "  of  Buffalo  or  Detroit — or  a  dozen  other 
true  centres  of  communal  life  which  have  a  concrete 
impressiveness  that  for  the  most  part  only  great  capi- 
tals in  Europe  possess  ;  a  tour  of  college  commence- 
ments in  scores  of  spots  consecrated  to  the  exalta- 
tion of  the  permanent  over  the  evanescent ;  contact 
in  any  wise  witli  the  prodigious  amount  of  right 
feeling  manifested  in  a  hundred  ways  throughout  a 
country  whose  prosperity  stimulates  generous  im- 
pulse, or  with  the  number  of  "  good  fellows  "  of  large, 
shrewd,  humorous  views  of  life,  critical  perhaps 
rather  than  constructive,  but  at  all  events  untouched 
by  cynicism,  perfectly  competent  and  admirably  con- 
fident, with  a  livelier  interest  in  everj'thing  within 
their  range  of  vision  than  can  be  felt  by  anyone 
mainly  occupied  with  sensuous  satisfaction,  saved 
from  boredom  by  a  robust  imperviousness,  ready  to 


NEW   YORK   AFTER  PARI8  411 

begin  life  over  again  after  everj'  reverse  with  unen- 
feebled  spirit,  and  finding,  in  the  working  out  of 
their  own  personal  salvation  according  to  the  gospel 
of  necessity  and  opportunity,  that  joy  which  the 
pursuit  of  pleasure  misses — experiences  of  every 
kind,  in  fine,  that  familiarize  lis  with  what  is  espec- 
ially American  in  our  civilization,  are  agreeable  as 
no  foreign  experiences  can  be,  because  they  are 
above  all  others  animating  and  sustaining.  Life  in 
America  has  for  everyone,  in  proportion  to  his  seri- 
ousness, the  zest  that  accompanies  the  "  advance  on 
Chaos  and  the  Dark."  Meantime,  one's  last  word 
about  the  America  emphasized  by  contrast  with  the 
organic  and  solidaire  society  of  France,  is  that,  for 
insuring  order  and  eflSciency  to  the  lines  of  this 
advance,  it  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  too  gravely 
the  utility  of  observing  attentively  the  work  in  the 
modem  world  of  the  only  other  great  nation  that 
follows  the  democratic  standard,  and  is  perennially 
prepared  to  make  sacrifices  for  ideas. 


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